Art Philosophy Professional Watercolor Review 15ml Tube Paints by Prima Compare to Shinhan
Art Philosophy (made by the company Prima Marketing who has been making crafter / student grade watercolor pan sets for years) has decided to branch out into the world of professional quality "artist grade" tube paints. These watercolors can be bought individually, and at the time of product release, has 18 colors to choose from. The company has made written claims that these are "professional paints capable of professional results with smooth blending easy color mixing. The tubes provide concentrated pigments with longevity and lightfastness"... but that last bit about them being lightfast should not have been so generally and broadly claimed.
I immediately noticed that a good portion of the colors are multi-pigment convenience mixtures and/or colors made from fugitive pigments. It's OK for a pro-grade brand to have colors that aren't lightfast. Though, it can be confusing to people who assume that the label "artist grade" means professional or lightfast. It's just a term any company can throw out there when they think their product can be used to create artwork. Professional lines typically offer accurate lightfast rating information, a high pigment load AND list the pigment code ingredients. These do not provide accurate ratings, but do qualify otherwise.
I'm not too happy with this many fugitive pigments being offered in a "professional quality" line, since it implies it's made for you to be able sell your art. It's common to find opera pink, neon dyes and fugitive pigments in professional watercolors... though it's usually a small percentage of a catalog. This is partially due to demand from graphic artists, such as those who do illustrations for print reproductions or product packaging, and other professionals who want the freedom to use artificially bright colors. I speculate that part of the abuse of fugitive pigments was to keep the price low. There were several tubes that had one lightfast ingredient, mixed with a fugitive one... as if maybe it was too expensive to do just a single pigment tube of PV19 for a permanent rose for instance?
After looking over the pigment selection, I picked out just four of the most reliably lightfast colors. There are 8 colors (of the 18 total) that I could have picked from, but I wasn't sure what the quality would be like and several of them were colors I rarely use in my art. I thought I would get the most use out of Ultramarine Blue Deep, Yellow Ochre, Greenish Yellow, and Permanent Brown. I also liked that these four colors could be mixed like a primary set, being muted earthy versions of red yellow and blue. The yellows and ultramarine mix to create leafy greens, the permanent brown and greenish yellow make beautiful warm skin tones, and the permanent brown plus ultramarine creates a mildly granulating neutral shadow color I'd describe as a deep grayish-purple. They are perfectly lightfast, maintaining their color after receiving 1 full year of daily sunlight:
Bright side to feeling like I could only justify buying such a small collection = I was not disappointed by the performance of these watercolors in the least. They are gorgeous. The pigment load is high and they re-wet easily when used from dry. Perfect for making your own travel palette. They act just like professional paints should, particularly just like other Asian made paints such as ShinHan, Mission Gold and Holbein. Specifically, they lack flow, they do not disperse in wet washes in the way western watercolors do. Brands like Daniel Smith, Winsor and Newton or Da Vinci may travel across the paper with ease. These Art Philosophy / Prima tube paints stay put, which can be really nice for beginners who want their brush marks to be exactly where they expect. That's a personal choice as an artist, and as a fan of both styles of paint I was not displeased by that.
Problem - the lightfast rating system written on these paint tubes bothers me. It's not standard, neither as an ASTM LFI-IV Roman numerals style, nor as a star rating system (such as 3 star system, up to 5 stars depending on the brand, that work just like Amazon reviews). Instead they wrote "LF 2" (the number 2, not star symbols) on a tube, which will confuse those who think it means LFII... when in actuality it means **/*** (2 of 3 stars) Since the star symbols were not used, I had to do some digging on their website to verify that it is actually a 3 star system. Further verified by the fact that "lightfastness 3" on a tube was written for stable trusted pigment ingredients.
I believe that if you're going to sell professional grade paints, you should make it clear which colors can be used in art for sale / hung on a wall where lightfast ratings truly matter. There were several colors that a rating of just "2" was not an adequate description. This middle ground rating was assigned to colors known to fade much much faster than other colors also assigned a "2" rating. Notably, Ultramarine Blue PB29 was marked as "2", while Rose Madder (Alizarin) also = 2... though Ultramarine has superb lightfastness (stable in direct sunlight for years) while Alazarin PR83 is fugitive, fades when exposed to UV light within months.
You may see Prussian Blue PB27 watercolor labeled as LFI / BW8 / *** / max lightfast. This is due to the ability of this color to recover in shade, unfortunately it still fades in light. You can learn more about that in the pigment database under blue here.
Is this watercolor the same as Shinhan watercolor? (Specifically, compare to Shinhan's PWC / SWC their pro grade, not Shinhan's lesser grade confusingly called "professional watercolor" in a blue box.) Well, I can NOT say these are the same paints, but they sure are certainly close. There are too many similarities between these paints to dismiss the possibility that they paid Shinhan's factory to produce the paint line for them. First, they are made in Korea, where Shinhan (and Mission Gold) factory is. Secondly, they seemed to build their color selection mainly around fugitive pigments, with little regard for lightfast rating accuracy and the occasional typo. This is something common to Shinhan's brand as well (that doesn't happen as much with the other Korean brand, Mission Gold, which tends to use more lightfast pigments in comparison). Thirdly, the retail price per tube is similar, and much lower than the average for pro paints. Finally and most importantly, I checked the way these Art Philosophy tube paints perform, the masstone vs diluted (pigment load range of color), flow / disperse, as well as direct color matches. In my limited selection I was able to test, the paints were nearly identical.
While I personally can't verify that these are really Shinhan paints with an Art Philosophy label, I can tell you that they are similar enough that if you're considering these you might as well consider Shinhan brand as well. Shinhan has a massive catalog of colors in comparison, and are generally easier to find on fine art supply websites you may already shop with. If these aren't Shinhan, they may just be made with the same base ingredients that are easy to obtain in Korea. There are differences in some brands versions of colors throughout the world. Depending on where the original pigment was made or mined, certain countries have slightly different colors and textures to their paints. These paints appear to use the same pigment source as Shinhan if nothing else. I'll put all the links to both Art Philosophy and Shinhan watercolors at the bottom of this page.
Swatch cards:
Where to buy? I highly recommend SHINHAN instead - it is basically the same paint and MUCH easier to find worldwide. More about that below.
I bought my Art Philosophy tube watercolors at Scrapbook.com here. BUT it looks like they have discontinued them in 2021. I am unsure if Art Philosophy is getting rid of them completely, but as of 3-21 I was able to find them on the manufacturers website at https://www.artphilosophy.com/product-category/art-philosophy/watercolor-tubes/
Scrapbook.com: Thousands of scrapbooking supplies. HUGE daily discounts!
Scrapbook's site may still carry other watercolor sets such as Prima confections and confetti pan sets, as well as other crafting inks and watercolors aimed at rubber stampers (such as Altenew's metallic full pan set).
Individual tubes:
As an alternative to Art Philosophy, Shinhan has a larger color selection and extremely similar painting performance. Shinhan watercolors can be bought individually in tubes, available worldwide at Jackson's art supply store here.
Sets:
You can also find large sets with a really nice per-tube cost breaking down to only a few bucks per 15ml tube on Amazon below. As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Note: this page contains affiliate links. All product opinions are my own. I am committed to honest reviews showcasing both the pros and cons of each product. I have not received payment from any brand for a review. I earn a commission from sales made through this web page's clickable banners or links to Amazon, Arteza, Scrapbook, Jackson's or Blick Art Materials websites.