I've panned multiple DS paints now.. and people should be aware that they have a massive shrinking issue. 50% at least. So if you try to figure out paint cost by ml you will be very surprised how much more it costs to actually fill a pan. I typically dry out new pans on a top shelf in my closet to keep my cats out of them so I don't even look at them for a few days.. and when I pulled out the DS palette I was shocked compared to others.. it was like they just disappeared.
Omg the glue, so clever. I have various palettes with large areas and my mixes spread all over them. I have one ceramic flower-shaped palette, but what a hack, cool. If I were to buy this I might be happy they’re all cheaper colours cos then they’re cheaper to replace, but by now I’ve got enough basics and the price is a bit much. The ginger hair is gorgeous and those muted green eyes, stunning.
Thank you for the thorough review. I love your mixing tests and agree with the Jane's grey. Also making mixing areas with glue is super clever. By the way I visited your lightfast page and it was so much helpful and fun. Great resources!
Thank you so much for taking the time to visit my site, I appreciate that and am glad you found it helpful. As you can see, I buy way too many coloring products lol :)
I am amazed at how many different varieties of green you were able to mix and use. Everything seemed to blend quite well for your artwork. Wonderful job!
Thank you, its funny because for all the greens I made I never once used the only green in this set. I prefer starting with phthalo blue, because it so quickly turns the right shade of green for me when i add a little yellow to it. After finishing this video I realize that Phthalo Green is another color I'll end up swapping out for something else in my personal "ultimate mixing set".
I'm so with you on the "mixing black" front. The idea that a pigment black is lifeless and inferior because I didn't slave over my watercolors and waste a ton of paint... well, it's nonsense. Other media use black and so can we. That said, you can get a really lovely dark grey from mixing Perylene Maroon or Violet with Perylene Green. And I LOVE love LOVE me some PBk11 (lunar black). *fist bump*
Similarly I love a magenta and pthalo green together for that paynes blue-gray sort of color you can mix. Lunar black is just so much fun with it's epic granulation! I'm always so confused when watercolorists say "I don't use black" ... gasp. Thanks for your comment :)
Great information but I had to turn the music off as I found it too distracting. I also adjusted the speed and screen size to my liking so i could read the notes.
It's a bright idea to use glue grids to serve as palette and avoid the paints from dripping down. I can put glue when Im bringing it on a pleiair and can remove it any time i want it clear. Thanks for the tip. Beautiful painting by the way. The set also worked quite well for your style.
I love DS paints, and I was going to buy this set with my birthday money but have decided not to because of the poor palette design. I’m at a loss to see how someone at DS did not bring up the inadequate and non-practical mixing area that “leaks.” It makes me think that no one working on the DS design team used this product in real time, if they did I’m sure something would have been said, surely? Either that or DS got a deal with a third party palette company where price reigned over practicality. If they are advertising an “ultimate mixing set” with portability in mind though, you would have thought more thought would have been given to the palette re mixing. Thanks for the review.
I understand, I should not have had to make it more functional with glue, this has been the major complaint I've heard from most people. I also just bought half pan sets from other manufacturers that had big metal cases with nice mixing areas with more than twice the paint for the same price. I'm working on reviews for Paul Rubens too, which is a fantastic new artist grade watercolor where you can get 24 colors for $50 and soon to be 48 pan sets for about $70. My personal biggest complaint with the DS Ultimate Mixing Set was that the pigments used were not special or exclusive to Daniel Smith, so they do not best represent why you should pay a lot of money to try their paints. Thanks for stopping by :)
Love this review and your art. Shame about the palette issue. Question. Do you find its better to fill your own pans or buy the pans first, even though they strink ? I am debating buying the colours I like instead. Can you advise ?
Nowadays I mainly invest in tubes to put into my own pans, mostly because I also like the freedom of mixing my own custom colors. For instance in some of my DIY videos, like mixing moonglow, i squeeze out a drop from 3 different tubes into the same pan to stir it together with a toothpick. You may find you save money in the long run since you'll have the ability to make fun custom colors instead of buying new ones. Because the price of DS is high, I try to only buy colors from them that are hard to get elsewhere, but that's personal preference. Happy painting :)
Thank you, I will keep that in mind for a future video. It will expose me as a total watercolor supply hoarder though lol :) Right now I have a few three-ring binders full of plastic page protector sheets made to hold business cards. I keep the swatches all organized by color so I can compare one brand's blues to another brand's blues at a glance.
I do enjoy Daniel Smith's paints, but like so many others, find their choice of palettes poor at best. Not a lot of thought went into making this cheap, plastic palette and charging a small fortune for them. What I do most of the time is make my own using gift card tins or find an inexpensive Cotman palette from Winsor/Newton, remove their paints, then fill them with my tube colors from other companies.. Be sure to save the half pans from the set, because not all empty 1/2 pans will fit into the slots. IMO, Daniel Smith got a little cocky in thinking people love our paints, so they won't really care if we put out a sub-standard , poorly designed palette. Thank you for your review!
Sad that pans were not labeled or in order of insert info, and total bust on pallet! Such poor quality pallet so even if paint is good a huge disappointment for such a high price!
Yeah overall I was not happy with the price of this set. Even without the case being such a problem, the colors were very expensive for their lowest priced pigments. I could only imagine paying this much happily if the selection were some of the unique mineral paints.
I personally think they would have been better off bringing out a beautiful metal tin with the half pans and logo printed on it in gold or something. I love their paints and have tubes and have squeezed them Into half pans and put them into a baby blue madeen metal tin.
I wish they had done that, it seems to be the biggest complaint from everyone's comments I've read. I saw a couple people who did not realize the lid would leak down onto the table and make such a mess, something that could have been easily avoided with a nicer metal tin. I tried to make my set work for me the best I could, but it is hard to recommend it over what you are doing with putting their tube colors in your own favorite tin.
I didn't notice it before but it has the logo on the bottom of the pans? That's adorable - love the extra details to packaging. Yes, I agree with you that the palette should have extra wells/compartment if the set is designed for mixing but thats a genius idea with the hot glue gun except it shouldnt have had to be an option that you did yourself. Also your painting gives me a sleeping beauty vibe because of the flowers and the sleepy dreamy eyes (which I love btw, the colours you used for it is prefect), what's it inspired by?
Yeah, I don't think many people will be happy with having to DIY fix the palette, but it definitely is an option to help the mixing area. So far I've read the most complaints about this set revolving around the plastic case, I will say that it is remarkably compact in comparison to my other sets though. I love the custom made half pan inserts being marked as Daniel Smith's on the bottom of the pans. I didn't notice it when playing with the full pans, it was more natural to take them out with of the empty one. Because I love flowers and plants so much, I knew that I would really need to be mixing some greens to see if this set worked for me. So I started thinking about the setting first, wanting to have as many different shades of green as I could harmoniously put around her. For quite a lot of my work I think about how I feel when I'm in my garden, at peace and away from it all. I was thinking about an old cartoon movie, Princess Mononoke, where the theme is humans not living in harmony with nature, so the girl ended up looking a bit like the anime character :)
I just ordered this for a friend for Christmas! I think it would have been perfect if it was a metal palette and had a mixing space. Bonus points if it was like the Cotman pocket palette that had a pull out mixing space underneath
I don't have the Cotman palette, but man that sounds like such a cool idea to have a little pull-out drawer. I think a lot of people are hoping Daniel Smith makes new types of sets in the future, I mostly read people wished it was metal.
I've panned multiple DS paints now.. and people should be aware that they have a massive shrinking issue. 50% at least. So if you try to figure out paint cost by ml you will be very surprised how much more it costs to actually fill a pan. I typically dry out new pans on a top shelf in my closet to keep my cats out of them so I don't even look at them for a few days.. and when I pulled out the DS palette I was shocked compared to others.. it was like they just disappeared.
After many years using only acrylics, I'm suddenly drawn to watercolors, and watching you paint is super inspiring!!
Omg the glue, so clever. I have various palettes with large areas and my mixes spread all over them. I have one ceramic flower-shaped palette, but what a hack, cool. If I were to buy this I might be happy they’re all cheaper colours cos then they’re cheaper to replace, but by now I’ve got enough basics and the price is a bit much. The ginger hair is gorgeous and those muted green eyes, stunning.
Thank you for the thorough review. I love your mixing tests and agree with the Jane's grey. Also making mixing areas with glue is super clever. By the way I visited your lightfast page and it was so much helpful and fun. Great resources!
Thank you so much for taking the time to visit my site, I appreciate that and am glad you found it helpful. As you can see, I buy way too many coloring products lol :)
I am amazed at how many different varieties of green you were able to mix and use. Everything seemed to blend quite well for your artwork. Wonderful job!
Thank you, its funny because for all the greens I made I never once used the only green in this set. I prefer starting with phthalo blue, because it so quickly turns the right shade of green for me when i add a little yellow to it. After finishing this video I realize that Phthalo Green is another color I'll end up swapping out for something else in my personal "ultimate mixing set".
I'm so with you on the "mixing black" front. The idea that a pigment black is lifeless and inferior because I didn't slave over my watercolors and waste a ton of paint... well, it's nonsense. Other media use black and so can we. That said, you can get a really lovely dark grey from mixing Perylene Maroon or Violet with Perylene Green. And I LOVE love LOVE me some PBk11 (lunar black). *fist bump*
Similarly I love a magenta and pthalo green together for that paynes blue-gray sort of color you can mix. Lunar black is just so much fun with it's epic granulation! I'm always so confused when watercolorists say "I don't use black" ... gasp. Thanks for your comment :)
@@KimberlyCrick Ha! Epic granulation indeed. It gives everything a moody mystique. I love it!
Really enjoyed the video 🤩
Great information but I had to turn the music off as I found it too distracting. I also adjusted the speed and screen size to my liking so i could read the notes.
It's a bright idea to use glue grids to serve as palette and avoid the paints from dripping down. I can put glue when Im bringing it on a pleiair and can remove it any time i want it clear. Thanks for the tip. Beautiful painting by the way. The set also worked quite well for your style.
I love DS paints, and I was going to buy this set with my birthday money but have decided not to because of the poor palette design. I’m at a loss to see how someone at DS did not bring up the inadequate and non-practical mixing area that “leaks.” It makes me think that no one working on the DS design team used this product in real time, if they did I’m sure something would have been said, surely? Either that or DS got a deal with a third party palette company where price reigned over practicality. If they are advertising an “ultimate mixing set” with portability in mind though, you would have thought more thought would have been given to the palette re mixing. Thanks for the review.
I understand, I should not have had to make it more functional with glue, this has been the major complaint I've heard from most people. I also just bought half pan sets from other manufacturers that had big metal cases with nice mixing areas with more than twice the paint for the same price. I'm working on reviews for Paul Rubens too, which is a fantastic new artist grade watercolor where you can get 24 colors for $50 and soon to be 48 pan sets for about $70. My personal biggest complaint with the DS Ultimate Mixing Set was that the pigments used were not special or exclusive to Daniel Smith, so they do not best represent why you should pay a lot of money to try their paints. Thanks for stopping by :)
Love this review and your art. Shame about the palette issue. Question. Do you find its better to fill your own pans or buy the pans first, even though they strink ? I am debating buying the colours I like instead. Can you advise ?
Nowadays I mainly invest in tubes to put into my own pans, mostly because I also like the freedom of mixing my own custom colors. For instance in some of my DIY videos, like mixing moonglow, i squeeze out a drop from 3 different tubes into the same pan to stir it together with a toothpick. You may find you save money in the long run since you'll have the ability to make fun custom colors instead of buying new ones. Because the price of DS is high, I try to only buy colors from them that are hard to get elsewhere, but that's personal preference. Happy painting :)
beautiful
Great reveiw!😁 I like your swatches too. I'd love tutorial on how you designed them and how you store them.
Thank you, I will keep that in mind for a future video. It will expose me as a total watercolor supply hoarder though lol :) Right now I have a few three-ring binders full of plastic page protector sheets made to hold business cards. I keep the swatches all organized by color so I can compare one brand's blues to another brand's blues at a glance.
I don't think it's propriete to name a super common and longtime existing mixing combo Jane's Grey…
I do enjoy Daniel Smith's paints, but like so many others, find their choice of palettes poor at best. Not a lot of thought went into making this cheap, plastic palette and charging a small fortune for them. What I do most of the time is make my own using gift card tins or find an inexpensive Cotman palette from Winsor/Newton, remove their paints, then fill them with my tube colors from other companies.. Be sure to save the half pans from the set, because not all empty 1/2 pans will fit into the slots. IMO, Daniel Smith got a little cocky in thinking people love our paints, so they won't really care if we put out a sub-standard , poorly designed palette. Thank you for your review!
Sad that pans were not labeled or in order of insert info, and total bust on pallet! Such poor quality pallet so even if paint is good a huge disappointment for such a high price!
Yeah overall I was not happy with the price of this set. Even without the case being such a problem, the colors were very expensive for their lowest priced pigments. I could only imagine paying this much happily if the selection were some of the unique mineral paints.
I personally think they would have been better off bringing out a beautiful metal tin with the half pans and logo printed on it in gold or something. I love their paints and have tubes and have squeezed them Into half pans and put them into a baby blue madeen metal tin.
I wish they had done that, it seems to be the biggest complaint from everyone's comments I've read. I saw a couple people who did not realize the lid would leak down onto the table and make such a mess, something that could have been easily avoided with a nicer metal tin. I tried to make my set work for me the best I could, but it is hard to recommend it over what you are doing with putting their tube colors in your own favorite tin.
I didn't notice it before but it has the logo on the bottom of the pans? That's adorable - love the extra details to packaging. Yes, I agree with you that the palette should have extra wells/compartment if the set is designed for mixing but thats a genius idea with the hot glue gun except it shouldnt have had to be an option that you did yourself.
Also your painting gives me a sleeping beauty vibe because of the flowers and the sleepy dreamy eyes (which I love btw, the colours you used for it is prefect), what's it inspired by?
Yeah, I don't think many people will be happy with having to DIY fix the palette, but it definitely is an option to help the mixing area. So far I've read the most complaints about this set revolving around the plastic case, I will say that it is remarkably compact in comparison to my other sets though. I love the custom made half pan inserts being marked as Daniel Smith's on the bottom of the pans. I didn't notice it when playing with the full pans, it was more natural to take them out with of the empty one.
Because I love flowers and plants so much, I knew that I would really need to be mixing some greens to see if this set worked for me. So I started thinking about the setting first, wanting to have as many different shades of green as I could harmoniously put around her. For quite a lot of my work I think about how I feel when I'm in my garden, at peace and away from it all. I was thinking about an old cartoon movie, Princess Mononoke, where the theme is humans not living in harmony with nature, so the girl ended up looking a bit like the anime character :)
@@KimberlyCrick I would have never thought of Princess Mononoke!! Now I'm in the mood to watch it, hahahahaha.
Lovely review, horrid music
It looks as though you could run out of the yellow quickly and will need to replace it soon.
I just ordered this for a friend for Christmas! I think it would have been perfect if it was a metal palette and had a mixing space. Bonus points if it was like the Cotman pocket palette that had a pull out mixing space underneath
I don't have the Cotman palette, but man that sounds like such a cool idea to have a little pull-out drawer. I think a lot of people are hoping Daniel Smith makes new types of sets in the future, I mostly read people wished it was metal.