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Last week I received an exciting parcel from India: a big selection of handmade watercolours and a sketchbook from the lovely Trupti of Arkaar Creation. They were beautifully wrapped!

The first two half pans I picked up were Potter’s Pink, so I decided that these would be the first two colours to explore.

But first, I had to unwrap all the colours. 🙂

Note: I love how each pan lists the paint colour and pigments. As a bonus, each pan has a magnet on the underside—how cool is that?

And then it was time to do some colour swatches! I did this in my current alpha Softcover Square sketchbook, but I would also like to do another version on better paper in the future.

The selection includes many beautiful colours, and I was impressed by how many of them re-wet well.

Exploring so many new colours at once can be a little overwhelming, so I was happy to stick with my original idea of starting with Potter’s Pink.

Trupti has created two versions of Potter’s Pink(PP). The lighter one is similar in hue to the Winsor and Newton PP, and the darker version is close to Schmincke’s PP. To find out why I like using Potter’s Pink see here and here.

I prefer a lighter Potter’s Pink but generally find the darker version easier to use. If you have tried Potter’s Pink, you’ll know it’s a very weak pigment and requires a lot of work to pick up enough pigment to achieve a nice wash.

I was blown away by how easy it was to pick up pigment from these two Arkaar Creation paints. Very impressive!

I immediately started mixing Potter’s Pink Lite with some colours from my everyday palette to see what hues it creates and how the Arkaar paint mixes with my Daniel Smith and Winsor & Newton paints.

So far so good!

I was on a Google Meet call with my friend Esther Semmens yesterday morning. It’s been a long time since we’ve caught up, and we typically sketch a Scottish Castle at the same time. I asked that we choose a pink castle so that I could test Potter’s Pink Lite.

As we were talking nonstop, this is an example of reflex sketching. I wasn’t particularly focused on my sketch or on my watercolour washes (it was also a 6 a.m. call for me, so it was very early in the morning to be painting).

Wow! I’m very impressed with how easy Potter’s Pink Lite was to use and how much granulation it created!

I’m looking forward to exploring these paints more in the coming weeks. (Both Potter’s Pink and all the other colours!) Thanks, Trupti, for sending me so many of your paints to test.

Do any of you use Arkaar Creation paints? What colours are you using?
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