I was contacted by the kind people at Viviva Colorsheets, they asked if I would like to try out their watercolor sheets sample booklet and I said sure. (I got the little booklet of watercolor sheets for free to review here on my blog- no other compensation or requirements – just share my thoughts). They gave me a link to share with you guys. I think it the company’s way of tracking if anyone goes to their site from my blog (it is not an affiliate link)
It would be helpful to me if you would go and check out what they have.
First up this is a small 2 3/4” by 5 1/4” booklet with all the pages sewn in at the spine. There’s 16 color tiles in the booklet. Each color tile is about 1 1/4” by 2 1/4”.
I did a quick swatch sheet using the same paper that I drew my mandala on. I noticed that the majority of the colors are really warm reds, yellows and oranges. There are 3 greens but two of them are really similar. There’s 2 blues and a violet, a magenta and a slate black that is almost more like a Payne’s Gray.
I am a bit surprised that the 2 browns look more like orange and don’t have as much depth as I would like.
Let’s see how they work for coloring in this project.
To give this a fair trial I decided to use them to color in a fun original floral mandala that I drew up while out on a recent camping trip.
I drew up the design in my sketchbook (Arteza affiliate link) that has mixed media paper using my most favorite drawing pen right now the Eco Pen. (Amazon affiliate link) it is waterproof and dries almost instantly. Then I grabbed a medium point round water brush. I jumped in and started playing with the colors.
The colors picked up so easily with the water brush and really seemed to go a long way on just one brush loading. One thing to notice is that the colors on the sheets are not exactly what you may expect. Make sure you do your own color swatch.
For example they top color in this photograph that looks like a metallic copper is really a lovely shade of blue.
I’m happy with the outcome and would certainly recommend them to folks looking into adult coloring books and using touches of watercolor to give them some pizazz! These paints would also be lovely for.coloring in on rubber stamped greeting cards.
I decided that I needed to try something to show the colors how I usually use watercolor. I’m a pen and ink artist usually and add color washes to my drawings. I wet the leave and added the colors letting them flow. I am really pleased with how this turned out!
Leave me a comment if you have tried out these paints and what you thought of them. I’m hoping to do more reviews in the future but that can only happen if folks read my blog and share it with their friends who will read it too.
If you like my blog and want more of my creative style make sure to check out my YouTube channel free art lessons.