QOR Watercolor Sample

I requested a sample from Golden for their new QOR watercolors so that I could have some fun and make a painting with them. The sample kit contains the 6 colors listed below and a small square sheet of watercolor paper to try them out on.

• Naples Yellow
• Transparent Brown Oxide
• Venetian Red
• Sap Green
• Indigo
• Ardoise Gray

Making color swatches and testing paints can be somewhat boring so I like to work my paint tests and experiments into actual paintings whenever possible. At first I wondered if there was enough paint to create a finished painting because the daubs of paint on the card are very small, but as you can see from the photo below that there's still plenty of paint leftover on the palette. I could probably even create another painting from it (although I would have to make do without yellow because I used up the Indian Yellow).

The dried colors softened easily with water, which is nice because this makes it easier to use up the dried paint on my palette. I like to work with freshly squeezed paint but there's always some leftover on the palette and it's less likely that I'll use it up if I have to scrub it in order to charge my brush with color.

Scrubbing dried watercolor paint will wear down the tip of the brush and it's also a distraction from painting. The Ardoise Gray was a little stubborn at first but I think this could just be that gray doesn't have the tinting strength of the other colors and this gave me the impression that it took longer to activate it, I'm not sure. I have since bought more QOR colors and all of them softened very easily with water.

Towards the end of the painting I added some Titanium White to the palette, I like to use it to add in the fine highlights and to create smokey atmospheric effects such as the clouds in the sky.

If you like this painting you might be interested in my other watercolor paintings.