Derwent Metallic Paint Pan Set is a travel-friendly, pocket size solid paint set that comes with a water brush and 5 built-in mixing palettes. It retails for about CAD$35 on Amazon, but I got it at half price, which was such a steal. Made in Britain, this is a quality product, especially in a sea of mostly chalky, cheap pan sets sold on Amazon.
The paints claim to be highly reflective and authentic metallic colours, and they really are. All the colours are opaque.
Though the set comes with a water brush, I used my Pentel one. The Derwent one is pretty similar to the Pentel. I am personally not fond of aqua brushes and find that no matter what I do, too much water comes out and continues to dispense even if I don’t squeeze the reservoir. I prefer to just use a regular round #6 watercolour brush instead.
Testing The Paints On White Paper
With the exception of the head and shadow, I painted the doll with Derwent Metallic Paint Pan Set. For the dark purple body, I used the purple metallic paint over a dark purple watercolour. The picture was taken under natural light and it does not do the metallic paints justice. The paints are more shimmery in person.
I took this second picture with flash. You can see the shimmer better.
Testing The Paints On Black Paper
Since this set claims to be striking on both black and white surfaces, I put it to the test by using it on black mixed media paper by Strathmore.
I used every colour in the pan set. The gold, silver, purple and green shades showed up very strong, but not so much for the pink, red and blues, which I needed to layer to get their full opacity. The Ice Blue shade shows up as silver no matter how many layers I piled on.
The Sunset shade showed up as a paler version of the Gold shade, and the Lime Gold also showed up very similar to the gold, with a hint of green.
The Graphite shade (darkest one) does not show up at all, not even its shimmer. It is not surprising though; black on black is not usually visible!
You can mix the shades together (some are mixed on the florals). Once dried, the shimmers are very pretty and the paints do not look chalky or splotchy.
I did a second painting and used Silver, Ice Blue, Blue, Purple and Pink to create bubbles. The Silver shade is the most pigmented of the bunch so I used it as highlight.
Shop It Or Drop It?
So far, from these paints to water-soluble graphite pencils to oil-based coloured pencils, Derwent has not let me down.
Overall, I like this set and plan to use these shades as accents. They are very pretty and easy to use. I got the set at half price, but I would get it even at full price because of the Derwent quality.
