Jerry Q Art Professional Artist Grade Watercolors 12 Half Pan Review

Looking for a cheap watercolor travel set, inexpensive enough for kids or a student, but doesn't contain terrible quality paint? This may be worth a look:

This set is priced low, I expected the quality of paint to be poor - but that was not the case. The color selection however, leaves a lot to be desired. For a 12 color travel set you really want it to have a Magenta in order to have floral pinks and to be able to mix purples. Instead you get Prussian Blue (sadly a fugitive color) and two convenience greens. It would have been perfect if they swapped out Prussian and one of the Greens to give you Magenta (or Permanent Rose) and Phthalo Blue.

Color selection aside, the paints re-wet easily, were creamy, flowed well and reacted to salt as expected. I had no issues with the paint quality. This is a nice way for younger people and students to be able to afford an artist grade professional quality paint without a big price tag. Useful for those just starting to experiment with artist grade paints, who are learning watercolor basics or don't yet know which colors they will reach for most often.

What I did have problems with is the packaging, case and brushes. I admit, I am not a fan of metal travel tins, especially with the sharp edges this one has. Not all corners are rolled over, so the tin is razor sharp in several spots. The packaging looked a bit dingy and banged up when I received it, and the tin had a minor dent. The travel brushes included had nice brush heads that held a lot of paint. The small one fit together snugly, but the large brush fell apart in half when doing gentle motions like dipping it into water for rinsing. You could glue it, but then it wouldn't be a travel brush. You could still use it just holding the small half of the brush while traveling. Those few things that were not paint related I took a star away for. In the end, it's still a great value for the money.