Sennelier La Petite Aquarelle Student Grade Watercolor Review 12 Pan Set Color Chart Swatch Card Video Painting Demonstration

Sennelier is a paint manufacturer from France specializing in honey-based watercolors. They also make other products like shellac based india inks, egg tempera, acrylic paints and watercolor brush pens. This review is for the La Petite Aquarelle 12 color half pan set which is their student grade watercolors. These paints do not include pigment code number (color index ingredients). I have done a lightfast test for them and they were mostly LFI / BW8 / max lightfastness. The orange had a slight dulling over a year in the window, but this selection is unlikely to cause problems should you decide to hang the art you make with it on your indoor walls.

My main complaint with these paints is pigment load, which is comparable to some other student paints yet seems to dry slightly softer looking. Some brands have student grades that have strong masstones that really take some investigation to notice differences between the student and pro qualities... but this is noticeably underwhelming when compared to their pro grade. This is pretty severe in the case of paynes gray or neutral tint, which I highly recommend their pro version instead. Sennelier generally has weak earth browns in both student and pro, so you may appreciate Da Vinci or White Nights for colors like Burnt Umber. There are 98 colors in the Sennelier professional quality watercolor line, you can see the Pro " l'Aquarelle " review here. All of their paints are known for smooth blending, transparency and good layering / glazing.

If you are able to find this set at a reasonable price, and like the unique palette design it could definitely function as a great starter set. Unfortunately compared to other brands in this price range they do not include pigment information. Luckily they seem to be a trustworthy company who uses lightfast pigments regardless of not telling us what is in the paint. There was extremely minor fading in the diluted range for orange, but it was barely visible in masstone (this is the only color that is borderline LFII instead of LFI).

I bought my set from Amazon below. As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. You can also find this, a 24 set and tube set available on Blick art supply store site here. Thank you :)

 

 

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