Rosa Gallery Watercolour Review

Hi friends! I have been dying to review Rosa Gallery watercolour for a long time. Thankfully, it has finally arrived in Canada as open stock! Previously, you could only get it on Amazon as a set. If you are curious about this Ukrainian brand and haven’t tried it out yet, please read this review. 🙂

UPDATE: I purchased the Classic set above on Amazon.com at the discounted price of US$16.00!

Open Stock:

Where To Buy

Rosa Gallery watercolour paints are available at DeSerres for CAD$4.99 each. DeSerres sold these open stock; however, if you buy online, DeSerres requires you to purchase a minimum of 2 units per colour. I bought mine in person because it makes no sense to buy 2 of the same when these are full pans!

By the way, I believe another Canadian retailer sells these online for CAD$3.99 each, but it is not in Ontario and I would have to pay close to $20 for shipping. Alternatively, you can also buy the palette sets on Amazon.com. At discounted price (like the Classic one I just bought) it is still cheaper to have it shipped to Canada from the US. 😉

Pan Size

For just CAD$4.99 each, you are getting full sized pans! In addition, pigment, opacity and lightfastness info are printed on each pan. Furthermore, these are made in Ukraine.

Rosa Gallery Watercolour Swatches

Look at that Magenta Rose! It’s single pigment and so vibrant! Same goes for the Aureoline. Moreover, these 8 are all lightfast shades, 4 of which are half transparent. The paints did not dry chalky at all, and mixed very clean with each other or with other brands.

UPDATE: Swatches of all of the Rosa Gallery paints I own

Rosa Gallery Watercolour Performance Review

First, I painted the blue heron from Let’s Make Art July digital box with just Rosa Gallery watercolour. For your information, I used 714, 754 and 737 for the feathers, and 751, 735 and 756 for the beak.

The paints worked beautifully. Colour me impressed!

Since I didn’t get to test out magenta and coral in the blue heron, I did a quick loose floral painting with them on Winsor & Newton Cotton paper. With a limited palette like this, I needed to mix and create all the shades from what I have, a good exercise which I don’t mind. 🙂

By the way, I mixed Rosa Gallery paints with Meiliang for the leaves in the painting above. They mixed beautifully without issues.

I did one more loose florals painting, this time on 9×12″ Fluid 100 hot pressed cotton paper. As expected, the paints dried a little more quickly on hot pressed paper, though the paper texture did not affect the paints’ performance. They went on smoothly. The colours were vibrant and true to pan.

Using the Classic Set

Here I used the Classic set, plus Bleedproof White and Opera Pink for the Rising Full Moon painting above. The Classic set has all the colours you need; if not for the project calling for Opera Pink, the 14 shades would have sufficed.

Summary

Rosa Gallery watercolour is a hit for me. In fact, I have been painting with it nonstop! You are definitely getting quality and value. If I make comparisons, I’d say Rosa Gallery is as good as Paul Rubens. Since it is sold open stock here, I actually prefer it!

Until next time, happy painting!