Hello fellow artists! I hope you had a great start of the year. My family and I went to Prague and France around Christmas last year, and as part of my pilgrimage, I visited the Sennelier store in Paris. Though I have used Sennelier soft pastels before, this is my first purchase of their watercolour. Please continue reading for the Sennelier l’Aquarelle Watercolour Review.
Magasin Sennelier, Paris
The Sennelier store is just across from the Louvre, which I also visited. It wasn’t my first time at the Louvre, but it was my first time at the Sennelier store. I was quite giddy when I took this picture from the outside. The inside was very small and borderline claustrophobic, so I didn’t take any pictures. They had a lot of goodies so I spent more than 120€ on art supplies, which I still considered worthwhile.
By the way, Euros were at an all time high against Canadian dollars at the time 🙁
This is one of the two Sennelier artist level l’Aquarelle (watercolour) boxes I purchased. The other one was metallic colours, which I have not used yet. I wanted to try this one first because it looks like a standalone set.
The highlight of Sennelier watercolour is the use of honey as the binder. I had high expectations for the artist level line going in, so let’s see how it swatches.
The 12 shades swatched nicely, with good transparency and no hint of cloudiness. However, I wished they included a cadmium yellow instead of the lemon yellow. This would be more apparent when I started painting with this palette.
Performance of Sennelier l’Aquarelle Box of 12 half pans
I did my first painting with the set, it definitely wasn’t my best but I have been in a rut for about a year now. 🙁 I tried to use all of the shades in the palette, but the yellow took a few layers to come through. The Lemon Yellow in the palette is a very cool, light yellow which another shade will overpower even at a high yellow ratio. The chicken came out much redder and darker than intended, simply because the Lemon Yellow did not come through when mixed with the redder shades.
I tried not to rely on the yellow, but at least in the one on the right the yellow came through a bit better.
The Payne’s Grey is great. No complaints there. This was the start of me not painting anything that needed yellow.
To demonstrate, I quickly painted the same thing twice, one with additional shades from Paul Rubens to supplement the Sennelier ‘Aquarelle palette and one without. Both had added Opera Pink from Paul Rubens Neon Watercolours for the sky, and Bleedproof White.
I used Mont Marte cotton paper which is 200gsm, not the best paper. The top one is with Sennelier l’Aquarelle Lemon Yellow for part of the sky; the bottom is with Paul Rubens Cadmium Yellow Medium. You can see that the cadmium yellow came through a lot stronger on the bottom painting.
Overall Sennelier l’Aquarelle Watercolour Review
The colours performed beautifully, as expected from Sennelier, but I find that the Paul Rubens watercolours are just as good. The inclusion of the lemon yellow instead of a stronger primary yellow makes it harder to use this as a standalone palette for me personally. Other than that it is a beautiful palette. I might swatch out the lemon yellow for a cadmium yellow so I won’t need to bring out another palette for most of my sketchbook paintings.
If I were to compare, Daniel Smith’s Inspiration Set impressed me more in quality than this one, minus the granulating shades. In my opinion, Daniel Smith’s watercolours looked and felt smoother. I definitely would not otherwise have paid 63.38€ ((full price) for this palette.
However, the weak yellow shade aside, this is still a beautiful palette that should fulfill most basic painting needs.
