Finetec coliro pearlcolours

So first of all: that's me back. I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays, I spent Solstice with my mum, Christmas with my family and Hogmanay with friends. Over all pretty good.
I was planning on returning much earlier, I was thinking the 2nd, but I've been really really ill for the last few days and completely unable to think or properly talk to people. Still have it a little but at least I'm able to write now.

So for Solstice my mum gave me a box of Finetec coliro pearlcolours.....these things are amazing.
I've really got into metallics recently after using the brass powder mix (that I used on a Light in the Dark) however there was a couple of problems with that method: If I mixed too much I couldn't reuse it and it used up a lot of my limited amount of gold calligraphy ink...I don't have enough to do something big with it again but my mum was thinking of testing out the brass powder with gum arabic (I think?) so I'll see how that goes and if it's worth it for me to try.
Anyway, after I finished that painting I was actually thinking of buying these, or one of the cheaper versions out there, but my mum had the same idea and decided to get them for me. :)



If anyone's used LuminArte watercolours before (which I'd also recommend if you can get cheap) the Finetec works more or less the exact same way but has a lot more mica in it to give it a really strong metallic look. You can either use a wet brush to rub some of the paint off if you want it thin or if you want thick paint then you just add a few drops of water to the paint pans and leave it for a minute or so. 

So here are the colours on watercolour paper. The black sharpie strip helps to show off how opaque the paint is. for each of the six colours I've done a thin wash on the right and a wide thick strip on the left, on the left half of the wide strip I did a second layer to see if I can get it completely opaque...almost.
So the first paint on the left, the one that shows up the worst in this example, is Tibet Gold: I'd say this is your basic gold. Unless you want something specifically warm or cool then this is probably what you'd use.
The second along is Inca Gold, my favourite. This is a far warmer old gold. Very pretty.
The third one is Arabic Gold: You might want to use this one as your basic gold instead but personally it feels a bit too new and shiny looking for my tastes. It's very similar to the Tibet Gold but I'll probably not use it often until the Tibet Gold runs out.
The fourth is Gold Pearl, my second favourite:  This is a much softer almost powdery rose gold. If I was trying to get one of the golds to fit into a painting more I'd probably go with this one.
The fifth is Moon Gold. I really like this one though I think I'd more use it as a warm silver than a gold. I'll need to remember about this colour, I could easily forget about it and pick something too strong.
The Sixth is Sterling Silver and eh....I'm not as bothered about it. It's a very white silver which I won't use as much as my other silver inks/pens but that variety is probably a good thing. I've always found it really hard to get a good gold anything, and now I have five different kinds. Getting a good silver colour is far easier but they all tend to be the same grey silver, maybe it's good I now have a white silver for if I need it.

These are tests to see how the paint flows through water, basically making a pool of gold paint at the top and a pathway of water coming down, then letting the paint flow down the path.... very pretty, it shimmered as it moves.
The little lines were done with thick paint and mechanical pencil lead. I wanted to see how it looked as thin lines but didn't have a pin on me.... kind of reminds me of Will 'o wisps against the blue paper.

It didn't take long for the water I was using to get very shimmery. I'm going to keep it and keep using it in the future: Already after only doing a few tests I can use it to paint a gentle shimmer layer onto the dark paper (you can kind of see it in the top right of the pervious picture.)

The last of my tests for now, done on Christmas. I wanted to see if the golds were different enough I could use them side by side. Done with Inca, Arabic and Moon Gold I believe. It was rather nice to just do a little doodle bird and colour it in.

It turns out that metallics are really hard to photograph, I'll need to work on that. It probably didn't help I waited till it started to get dark to take these photos. maybe I should look up some tutorials...hmm.