Whenever I travel to Japan, I always make special visits to art supplies shops and stock up on Japanese products. They are quite pricey here in Europe as is ordering directly on-line due to shipping and duty costs. I’m there almost every year anyway so I’m happy to wait! One of such products I got hold of last July is a set of 12 Kusakabe watercolor tubes in the Charcoal Series.
As you can see, the colors are pretty subdued and calming yet intense and vivid. According to the product description, the pigments are derived from charcoal offcuts (I guess that means residue) which allows for a subtle granulating effect. The paint is suitable for calligraphy and sumie-type paintings where charcoal ink (sumi) is typically used. However, I thought I would just have a little play around with the colors and see what would happen. And here I ended up with some colorful abstract painting!
This was done on an A4 sheet of Canson’s 300gsm cold pressed paper. I went for the wet-on-wet method to achieve the blooming effect and started from light to dark colors so the shades would blend well with each other. Although it was just a warm-up, I thought I would share this here to give you an idea of how the charcoal watercolors would look. Very pleased with it, and now look forward to painting more with it!
My Kawaii Quarter 