Hi friends,
Welcome to the first “Art Supplies Spotlight” blog post. I want to use this blog space to share all things art, including art supplies. When I started painting in early 2022, I grew to love art supplies and began building quite a collection. I predominantly use watercolor supplies, so these posts will mainly include paints, brushes, and paper. Occasionally, I will experiment with other media such as gouache, ink pens, colored pencils, and graphite pencils.
I’d love to share about these supplies in hopes of inspiring others to try and experiment with either their own or new art supplies and to bring some light to small businesses, as I have been more intentional about where I direct my support. It also encourages me to use and get to know my supplies more in-depth, which is something I wanted to do more of in 2024. With these blog posts, I will delve into my thoughts about these supplies and include swatches and painting demos.
In this first blog, I will cover the paints in my RuCo Paints Bespoke Wooden Box (NORD Collection) and my first custom order. These are handmade paints made by Marlena, who is based in the Northern Rivers. Marlena runs a one-woman business called RuCo Paints and offers a large range of art supplies, including handmade watercolor paints (both mattes and shimmers), ceramics, artist tools, handmade paper, and paint brushes. This was my first purchase from RuCo Paints, and I fell in love with these supplies—I absolutely adore the ceramic paint pots and wooden boxes! You will see a lot more blog posts about the paints from RuCo Paints, and I hope you’ll grow to love them as much as I do.
Handmade watercolor paints are more expensive compared to commercial or mass-produced watercolor paints. Handmade paints require more effort and time to make, as they are mulled by hand until the right consistency is achieved, and the pigment is completely dispersed in the binder. As an aspiring artist, I stand by the pricing of handmade items/artworks, as I believe artists should charge for their time and effort—artists are worthy of the amount they charge, even if it is a bit more.
A wide range of watercolor paint products are available at any time in the RuCo Paints store, including:
Single ceramic paint pans ranging between $25 - $40 AUD, depending on the pigment used. They contain about a half pan's worth of paint.
Mini Collections with mini pans of paint.
Standard Collections with ceramic pans that hold a half pan's worth of paint.
Bespoke Wooden Boxes with ceramic pans that hold a half pan plus worth of paint.
Note: prices do not include GST.
Collections are released every 4 - 6 weeks. Those in Bespoke Wooden Boxes are never restocked, while the mini collections are generally restocked depending on demand.
Now, to the fun part: the paints themselves! The NORD Box was on sale when I purchased it, and I managed to get it for $180 AUD. When I received my NORD Box, each ceramic pan was secured to the box with blu-tac to prevent movement during transit. The NORD Box also came with a recyclable brush cloth, a swatch card, and a name card, which is standard for wooden boxes. Every order also includes some freebies, which can be either dot cards, a swatch card, or a muller print.
The following colors and swatches are from the NORD Collection:
The rest of the colors and swatches are single ceramic pans I bought separately or from seconds packs:
Overall, I love the balance of colors in this box. The mixes you can achieve range from moody and muted to bright and vibrant. There are a few sets of primaries included in this box, so you can mix a wide range of colors.
Now onto my first custom order from RuCo Paints. At the time of purchasing my first custom box, custom orders were offered. However, as of mid-2023, they were no longer available officially on the website. Custom orders generally took about 4 - 6 weeks to complete from the date of order. For my first order, I chose 15 colors in a wooden box, which cost about $425 AUD. As with the NORD Box, my custom order also came with a recyclable brush cloth, a swatch card, and a name card, which is standard for wooden boxes. I tried to include a variety of colors: earthy colors, a set of primaries, and a few bright colors. The following colors and swatches are from my custom order:
The paints themselves are smooth, creamy, and easy to use. Due to their handmade nature, each paint has unique characteristics, and some can be quite textural depending on the pigment(s) used. For example, Slate and Pluto have visible larger pigments. Some paints have low tinting strength and texture, and some separate into different colors depending on the amount of water used. The website states all paints are made from lightfast and highest quality pigments, so lightfastness isn’t an issue for those wanting to use these paints for original paintings. I started with Winsor & Newton Cotman paints at the beginning of my painting journey. Being commercial paints, they are more consistent and have less texture, so handmade paints took me a while to get used to. But I have grown to love the texture and characteristics of handmade paints since using them more.
Some colors in the NORD box have some binder separation, especially Bright Skye, where it is quite obvious the binder has started to separate from the paint which I suspect has more to do with the storage conditions/travelling than the paint itself. The NORD Collection has traveled with me multiple times, even during hot and humid Australian summers, which possibly has affected the paints as my other boxes haven't travelled with me and the binder separation hasn't been an issue in the other paints,I have from RuCo. Judging by the color of Bright Skye itself, it looks like it could be Cobalt Chromium-based, which is common for paints containing Cobalt pigments as the pigment particles are generally heavier and larger and tend to separate over time. The color itself is quite opaque, which means it could be blended with a white pigment, and the two pigments may react, disperse, and behave differently in the binder over time.
The piece below is called “Dancing Flowers,” and I have used mainly the colors from the wooden box above. As you can see, there is a wide range of colors you can achieve from the colors in the two boxes, from vibrant to darker and more earthy tones.
If you made it this far, thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed this blog post.
Until next time.
Much love,
Wendy
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