Prima MarketingPrima Confections Watercolor Pans 1-Tropicals, Other, Multicoloured, 12 Count (Pack of 1)

This is a set of 12 watercolour half-pans in a metal palette. They are advertised as "professional" or "artist quality" on the box but to be honest, they're not. They're student-grade at best and are clearly not designed for artists (no lightfastness ratings, no pigment information), but they are in nice colours and they do paint well on cellulose-pulp paper, but not on 100% cotton paper.This set has 12 colours, including 3 nice greens, 2 nice blues, a purple, 2 rose-y reds and an orange, a brown, a yellow and a yellow ochre. They're fairly opaque and chalky when painting on the swatch card enclosed in the palette but are much nicer on paper. Some of the colours are really nice. They mix beautifully into some really nice colours if you mix them on the palette but they do not mix well on the paper, wet-in-wet. They seem to contain too much detergent/wetting agent that makes them explode when put onto wet paper, making them hard to control. They do sediment quite a lot and the paints are fairly opaque. They have a lot of lithopone filler in them which will make the colours fade and discolour over time.Keeping all of the above in mind, they are beautiful colours and a lot of fun - nice for sketching with en plein air for example.The palette, however, is the real draw. I paid £14.80 for this set (though the price has gone up since), which makes them a VERY economical way to get a high-quality metal palette that holds 12 half-pans nominally or can take 21 half-pans if you add those from another brand that are a little smaller. If you remove the paint from the half-pans, you have 12 half-pans and a palette you can reuse, which to buy would normally cost you a good £25-30 empty - empty metal palettes can be very expensive - so even if you don't like the paints, if this set are retailing for under £30, they make a good draw for the palette and empty half-pans alone.

Bought this as a first palette based on the price point and the colours. I didn't want a huge palette and I loved the look of the less traditional colours. Takes away the hassle of mixing. Colours are vibrant and the quality is nice. I picked up a windsor and newton grey to add to this palette and much prefer the quality of the prima. Only draw back is the refils seem hard to get and I wanted to pick up a few more singles rather than buy a new palette. I cant find them on Amazon and I only found a few on the actual prima website.

Absolutely amazing colours - bright, beautiful, joyful (if I can use that word for a box of paints?). These paints are great for painting spring flowers...well, not painting actual flowers of course (unless you are ordered to by the Queen of Hearts and you are some lowly Knave in a fairy story...) ...are great for painting a watercolour painting of spring flowers. Or I guess you could paint real flowers but don’t blame me if they wilt and die in the process.Cut to the chase - great value, great colours, great I’ve finished rambling now.Buy. Bye.

I love the prima marketing water colour sets... They are all wonderful to play with and I love using them in my art journaling. I love the names, and I love trying to indentify the proper names of the paints, but love the names ... A great gift idea for a budding artist... I will probably collect the entire group... Cos they are just fun!

I have been enjoying using the Decadent pies set so I thought I would treat myself to this set as the colours looked quite vibrant and interesting. They are truly vibrant but I have only given the set 3 stars because I have found that there is very little difference between the two blues and the two greens. One of the blues is slightly lighter than the other....an effect you could have acheived when painting yourself by dilution...and one of the greens has the faintest tinge of more blue than the other and again you could acheive that yourself with the addition of blue. Therefore I feel that Prima have cheated me out of two pans of watercolour and that in reality I have only 10 not 12. It is a dinky set in a small tin which would not take up too much room in a bag but the pans do shift about a bit in mine when I use them so colours can easily get contaminated if you get carried away!

I absolutely love these paints, I'm gradually collecting all of the palettes by Art Philosophy. They are highly pigmented and have a good choice of colours

The paints are so pretty and really nice quality, I'm very happy with this except for the fact that the tin came broken and dented from transit. I fixed the tin but unfortunately it's still dented and I don't know how to fix that. Otherwise very happy!

Beautiful smooth, creamy watercolours. They mix well. Fast delivery. Thank you!