Dr. Ph. Martin's Hydrus Fine Art Watercolor, 0.5 oz, Set of 12 (Set 3)

This is my favorite medium. It is difficult to work with, but the results will have potential buyers gasping and stopping in their tracks. (Personal experience.) Unlike regular watercolors, these sink into the paper and actually dye the fibers as applied, giving your painting a lively luster. The pigment catches the light from multiple angles for deep and complex color transitions. These paints are lightfast, and don’t let the price scare you. Because they’re concentrated, you don’t use more than a few drops at a time. How to use: First, plan. Go from light to dark. Work slowly and build up your layers deliberately, much like you would with any deeply staining watercolor sort of like Schminke. An extra coat of sizing doesn’t hurt, either, if you happen to be like me (see the leaf painting. Only nerds paint like this!) Either way, make sure you use a good 100% cotton rag watercolor paper like Arches or similar. Dispense drops of paint to your palette only as needed, to prevent any clumping. Mix with other media if you like, to add a splash of color. I’ve also used this as under painting for other media, since it doesn’t move once it has cured. I have all the sets. There are 3. I love the range of colors. I noticed that some of the reds and oranges can trend pinkish in certain light. If it bothers me, I add a hint of yellow. Always test your colors in natural light before applying. The colors look different on paper than in your bottles. You will eventually learn your colors, of course, and how each one behaves, just as with any other paint. My background is in comics, advertising, promotional and commercial art. I am now retired, and I use my old tools and paints to paint florals and nature now.

I purchased Sets 2 & 3. They arrived safe and sound. Set 2 was missing one of the colors (Doubled up with another). These Watercolors are not only beautiful but so vivid! They take some time to get used to them but they blend and spread so wonderfully. At any rate I mentioned the Customer service was the BEST EVER well, it is! Hands down the BEST I have dealt with in many years. As I noticed on other reviews there were either duplicates (In my case there were) Or missing, damaged or whatever in a few NOT ALL of the sets. I bought these here on Amazon and I have no clue where they come form or what. Yet when i did my inspection I noticed that I had 2 of the same color and one was missing. I emailed Dr. Ph Martian and explained the issue. As with most emails to a customer service I figured i'd hear from them in a week, a month or never....... Much to my surprise I got a reply in less than 10 minutes, Honest to God! I verified my address and within the hour i had two more emails and I woke to a notice that my "Order" was shipped and issued a tracking number. I was truly amazed that such SERVICE actually existed anymore. If you purchase ANY of Dr. Ph Martian products (And you should) Beware that they have the BEST Customer service in the land! I highly recommend their products and they are beautiful as well. (The "Hydrus" Line are Light fast and of Archival Quality). Such a pleasure in every concern. What great Products and even better Customer Service! Happy Painting,

The colors are so vibrant yet still transparent. I fell in love instantly! They’re just as good when you reread them as they were right out of the bottle. You can do so much with just one drop! I will be buying more sets!

I love this watercolor set and use it in so many ways…as ink for my Calligraphy classes….watercolors are so unique. My only problem is with Amazon….they never issued my refund and I am furious about it. I am an Art teacher and would have encouraged my students to purchase this costly product. Amazon needs to take care of this ASAP.

No las conocía, así es que probarlas fue un descubrimiento maravilloso, me encantaron, solo que uno de los frascos venía con muchísimo menos contenido, no se derramó durante el envío, pues tuvieron bastante cuidado en su empaque

Such a good buy. I haven't regretted this purchase at all. The quality of these watercolours is phenomenal, I'd recommend it to any avid traditional artist. It came packaged well, there was no spilling or leakage. It was secured efficiently. It came on time, and all the colours worked wonderful.

What a great product! I love these. Vibrant colors that are highly pigmented.

I bought this as a gift for my daughter, below are her comments (note: we also were sent the India Ink when we initially ordered this watercolor set, so this was the second try) : I was extremely excited to receive these, and opened the package with glee! To my dismay as i was dropping out some ink into my palette to swatch them, something you need to do with new art supplies so you know how the colors will look straight out of the bottle, every single bottle of ink had a crusty sediment on the side that was lying down. This was almost as if they had been baking in a warehouse for 5 or so years or something. I decided to test things anyways just to see how well the inks worked. I went in numerical order. The yellows and reds worked perfectly, extremely vibrant and smooth application. A little goes a long way! When I got to the browns, however, that’s when issues appeared. All three of the browns in the set were completely unusable. The red oxide had separated in the bottle so I shook it up in hopes of fixing it, but that didn’t work. It took over 30 minutes to dry when applied to paper, while the other not brown colors dried slightly faster than standard pan-based watercolors. The raw sienna was a congealed mess, when poking it with the bottle’s dropper the consistency was more similar to tube based watercolors than any sort of ink. The dropper couldn't’ pick up this viscous fluid, so I had to tap it on my pallette to get some off. When applied to the paper it behaved like mud, even when water was added to it. The raw umber resembled a chunky veggie stew. There were globs of dried up ink in the bottle and around the rim, I even had to squeeze the dropper for a few minutes to get the dried up ink out of it, which shot out like a plug back into the bottle. The bottle also wasn’t completely full either, it was about ⅔-¾ full while every single other bottle had been properly filled. When swatching it was chunky and uneven. The blues and purple were absolutely fine other than the crust in the bottles, just like the reds and yellows. When I tested out the colors on some art I had already drawn on watercolor paper, the browns were opaque and not translucent, so they covered up the lines. The other colors behaved exactly as I’d expected them to. Overall, the problem doesn't seem like it was the product’s fault because all the browns had arrived in poor condition while the other colors . One was separated, another was congealed, the other was partially dried up.