Meiliang Watercolour Review

I am excited to review Meiliang, aka Pretty Excellent (direct translation), one of the most popular watercolour pan palettes on Amazon. I bought it on Prime day for about CAD $22, quite a steal as it has 36 colours. So is it as good as thousands of people say?

Meiliang is the student grade paint made by Aowen, a company in Shanghai which also makes the artist grade brand Paul Rubens. I have purchased Paul Rubens 48-pan palette as well, so I can compare the two.

First off, the cute aqua coloured tin is much less hefty than Paul Rubens, and the paint is housed in one sheet of thin plastic instead of customizable half pans like in Paul Rubens. At this price point you cannot do much better than this though (Paul Rubens sets are 2-3x the price). The Meiliang set comes with a swatch card as well as a water brush. The water brush is flimsy and too soft in the middle, which I cannot unscrew to fill it with water. It is useless, but it doesn’t matter because I don’t like using water brushes anyway. It went straight to my trash bin.

Shade Names Are A Bit Of A Mess

Though the Chinese names are the same as in the back of the box, the English names on the swatch cards have some discrepancies. I go by the names on the official Amazon listing or on the back of the box.

Reviewing Meiliang Watercolour 36-Pan Set

I did this Halloween Cat painting from watching a tutorial on letsmakeart.com. I didn’t use the more vivid blue that I should have, but I find that the paints were very easy to rewet and to use.

I did a few more paintings following tutorials on letsmakeart.com with Meiliang paints to further review the watercolours.

Meiliang Watercolour Review

The Good

These paints layer very well, and are super easy to blend. Most of them are transparent. They are not just good for the price–they are good, period. I am not very good at watercolour yet, but I do enjoy painting with Meiliang.

The Bad

One minor issue I have with Meiliang, however, is that I find it difficult to lift most of the shades, even when the paint is still wet. The colours stain cotton and cellulose alike, so once you lay them down on paper, forget about lifting them. At first I thought it was just me, but I had no trouble lifting Paul Rubens on the same papers I had painted with Meiliang on.

Another issue is lightfastness. According to Kim Crick, Meiliang has fugitive colours (Kim Crick also had trouble lifting the colours). I am super picky when it comes to that, especially with coloured pencils because each portrait takes me 5-6 hours and I would not be happy if the colours fade out in a matter of months. When I put in that amount of time, effort and energy, I want my work to last.

Is Meiliang Worth Buying?

Aside from the staining and lightfastness issues, I still find Meiliang a good student grade set of watercolour. When you start out you don’t necessary need top quality artist grade paint, but you need good student grade paints so you won’t think it’s you when the paints don’t work well.

I keep it in mind when I paint something to give away or to sell, I will be using professional artist grade paints like Paul Rubens instead. For everyday practice or work that will go straight into a portfolio, I still use Meiliang.