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Looking for affordable watercolour paints that deliver professional results? Aren’t we all!

I just received a Meilang set of 36 Watercolour Tubes to review. I’ve been very curious to see how they compare to my existing palette of paints from renowned brands.

I want to know whether investing in expensive paints is truly necessary and I’m hoping to find some substitutes for beloved colours within this affordable set of watercolours.

You too? Well let’s dive in then!

This rather pretty box contains 5ml tubes of Meilang watercolour paint in 36 colours. That wide selection of colour made me very excited to get them open and have a bit of a play, but I was also a little nervous because they are relatively inexpensive, so I didn't want to get my hopes up.

Despite the price, the Meilang Watercolour Set is not intended purely for children. It is priced in a student level range but is reported to be of high quality.

Spoiler alert… I am happy to say that the Meilang Watercolour set has been a delight to paint with so far.

I’m used to using my set of professional grade watercolour paints from big name brands that I have built up over the years. I have a mix of Schmincke, Daniel Smith and Holbein paints. I call them my ‘grown up watercolours’ and use them for all my paintings.

So let’s see how they compare to this set of Paul Rubens Meilang Watercolour Tubes.

Price comparison

I usually buy 15ml tubes of my professional paints and those range in price from around USD11 to USD21.

The 5ml tube versions would be roughly USD8 to 14.

Why are single tubes of individual watercolours different prices within a single brand?

Artist quality paints are typically available in individual colours which are arranged in series. Series 1 colours cheaper pigments and series 5 colours contain the most expensive pigments.

More expensive pigments are not necessarily better - they are just more costly to acquire. Don’t think that a series 1 paint is of lower quality than a series 5. It may potentially have some more precious minerals in it, and it's possible that those more expensive ingredients have been chosen for their granulating effects or other particular qualities, but a painting made with all series 4 and 5 paints is not automatically going to be superior to a painting made with series 1 paints.

For simple calculations, let’s just assume we were buying only series 1 paints to compare.

Meilang set of 36 compared to Artist Quality Professional Brands

If you were to choose 36 of the 5ml tubes from somewhere like Daniel Smith, Schmincke or Holbein and they all happened to be series 1 (the cheapest ones) you would be looking at a minimum approximate total cost of USD288. (36 x $8)

The Meilang set of 36 has a list price of USD36 but at the time of writing this they are on special for USD30.

The Meilang set is at least 8 times cheaper.

Now if you are starting out, it's unlikely that you will buy 36 tubes in one go. So you might not be needing to shell out $288 to get started. But you might look for a set of 6 of the 5ml tubes. Schmincke offer such a set for $48 (price at the time of writing this article.)

You would still be spending more for 6 Schmincke tubes than you would for all 36 Meilang tubes.

Of course you can easily paint with only 6 colours. 🌈 But be honest… you’d really quite like a veritable rainbow of 6 times as many colours to play with, wouldn’t you?

You’d save yourself $18 which you could spend on brushes.

(Or chocolates. Painters need to snack.)

Once you’ve painted for a while and you know what colours you like, you could then go and look for those colours in the Artist quality professional brands, if you feel the need. Or just splash out on a specialty colour or two that has a special property to add to your palette.

Let’s see the Colours in the Meilang Set of 36 Watercolour Tubes

I’m not one for much patient swatching… but I did it for this set because I really wanted to see what all those colours are like.

I think the best way to test paints is to get on and make a painting rather than filling in little boxes on a swatch card. But I also prefer to stick to a limited colour range in a single painting. A limited palette is always going to produce a more harmonious, unified painting. But that would mean quite a lot of paintings before I got to use all these colours!

So I got to swatching.

You’re welcome.

I tested a dab of the paint almost neat out of the tube (little or no water).

Next to that I added another dab of the colour and then softened it out with clean water to see how much whoosh (very technical) the colour had and how the pigments interact with the water. This is where the magic of watercolour comes from - the way the pigments behave in the water.

I also tested a strong colour mix and a more dilute version over a black stripe, to see how transparent they are.

Watercolour should be transparent, in my opinion. That’s another part of their joy. (If you like opaque paint, then gouache is probably the medium for you, rather than watercolour).

When I am buying individual colours I do my best to choose only the transparent ones. Most of these colours are transparent from what I can see. You can’t see them over the black strip in most cases.

I was delighted to find that there are tremendously similar versions of many of my favourite vibrant colours. Check out my comparison below.

Do you think you would be able to tell which brand I was using in a finished painting?

I used the Meilang set and painted a loose rose bush painting. The colours are delightful. They are intense and vibrant.

If you are thinking that you prefer muted colours, don’t forget that it is easy to desaturate a vibrant colour (by adding a drop of its complementary colour). I explain more about how to do that in this blog post and talk about why you might want to.

It is far better to start off with vibrant paints, in my opinion (but of course I do adore juicy colour) because then you have the option. If you only have muted colours you are stuck with them as you cannot make a vibrant colour out of a desaturated one. It only works the other way around.

Is Expensive Watercolour Paint Worth it?

This is a very personal question. I’m going to circle back to this point in a minute, but I think we all have to figure out what supports and motivates us. If you know you feel more empowered by equipping yourself with the best Artist quality brands you can buy, do that. If you know you feel liberated by having approachable supplies that did not cost an arm and a leg, then choose those.

All it comes down to is which ones are going to make you more likely to actually do some painting.

Here are some of the key points as I see it:

• Paul Ruben’s Meilang Set offers a wide colour range (36 colours already chosen for you) for a low price

• The Artist Quality brands have more colours in the whole range eg 238+ colours from Daniel Smith. But how many of those do you really need? It can make choosing an individual colour a bit overwhelming.

• Cost is a no brainer - the Meilang set is at least 8 times cheaper any way you look at it

• The Meilang set is a collection clean vibrant colours. If you are looking for special properties like granulation, iridescence or staining colour you will need to look elsewhere

• More information about the properties of each colour is easily available for the professional Artist Quality brands. They have colour charts that spell out things like the transparency, granulation, staining and light fastness for each colour. Meilang paints have less information but it is printed on the label of each very tiny tube

I couldn't find such an equivalent colour chart detailing the watercolour paint properties for Meilang, but I did notice that some of these properties are marked on the individual tube - transparency and weathering resistance (which I am assuming to be lightfastness, but I could be wrong). However you do need a magnifying glass to read them!

When I got out my magnifier app on my phone I saw that the individual pigments are also listed. This is rather reassuring. There are websites that will tell you all sorts of information about those individual pigments so you can research the lightfastness etc for yourself if you are that way inclined.

Personally I am really not too bothered either way.

I paint because it is fun.

It’s relaxing and satisfying.

I don’t really care how my painting turns out. I do care about how delicious the colours are while I am painting and how easy they are to use.

If you are painting for sale, or commission or something like that then I think you need to pay a bit more attention to how fugitive (non-lightfast) the colours are. But if you paint for the joy of it, or to digitise the paintings then I don’t think it matters.

Advantages of Watercolour Tubes over Watercolour Pans

One of the things I am rather enjoying is using paint fresh from the tube. It is my habit to paint from a pan. You spritz the pan back to life with a bit of water and you are good to go. I chose this approach many years ago because I can’t abide waste.

By the way if you are concerned about this tubes vs pans questions I have a whole other blog article about exactly that here which will show you how to figure out what is best for YOU.

Having tubes gives you the option of working this way or using the paint fresh from the tube. Of course you can get a palette box and squeeze out the tubes into the palette wells and let them dry.

But working with fresh paint is lovely. You squeeze out little blobs (or lines) of the colours you think you will need onto your palette just before you start painting and off you go. I think it can be a little easier to get your consistency right if you start with fresh paint as opposed to dry pans and this is the key to watercolour.

Controlling the ratio of pigment to water is very important.

But I opted to use dry pans many years ago because I found that I inevitably miscalculated the amount of paint I needed and which colours. Now you could say that watercolour is never wasted because dry paint can always be reconstituted with water so you can come back and use your leftover paint tomorrow.

But in reality, who knows if you are going to need that particular colour tomorrow? Or the next day?

And can you tell which colour it is when it has dried on the palette? The dry versions can look very different from the dilute ones.

So how big of a palette are you going to end up needing? And it's always going to be a big mess.

But if your whole tube of Meilang paint cost less than a dollar, it is very much easier to let go of the little dab of unused paint and clean your palette at the end of the session.

Which brings me to one of the core painting questions I believe we all need to answer:

Are Your Watercolour Paints Too Good, or Not Good Enough?

There is no right or wrong answer here, only a matter of personal preference.

Some of us will feel that we can only do our best and most serious work with the highest grade of expensive professional supplies.

Some of us feel entirely the opposite way. Outrageously expensive art supplies can heap a burden of expectations on your painting efforts and bring out your most perfectionistic tendencies while you try to do those professional paints justice. If not, you’re just wasting them, right?

Actually, I don’t think you are wasting them, even if your painting doesn’t turn out well, but so many of us feel that way.

I wrote more about this idea in this post about the best art supplies for beginners, and I even wrote a fractured fairy tale about it here.

The story is about Goldilocks, because like her I am always seeking the supplies that are good enough to be a joy to use but not so ‘good’ that they are intimidating. In short, the ones that are just right.

The best supplies are the ones that you are going to be able to use to paint with joyful abandon.

In sum, my advice is : Painter, Know Thyself.

And if you decide that you want inexpensive paint that performs to a very high standard, this Meilang set just might be the one for you.

By the way, if you are wanting to learn more about watercolour supplies, I have a whole class about exactly that - it’s free, and you can sign up here. 👇

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