Today, I bring you a short review of the watercolor papers from Jackson’s Art Supplies. In short, the papers are quite amazing for their price. I truly, truly enjoy them and have ordered more since my first order to try them this fall.

I also have a few brushes I like a lot from Jackson’s, so I added these in here. The order I have placed in January hasn’t reached me yet, but I’ll eventually add info on the new brushes I ordered as soon as I try them.

Finally, I have ordered with five other lovely ladies a sample of all of the artist pigment from Jackson…. so at some point, there will be a review on these as well. But heck, as you all know, I have too many projects going on.

To the reviews!

Aujourd’hui, je vous donne mon opinion sur les papiers aquarelle de Jackson’s Art Supplies. En bref, ils sont super pour le prix. Je les aime vraiment et j’en ai déjà recommandé depuis mon premier essai cet automne.

J’ai aussi quelques pinceaux de Jackson’s, alors je vous laisse mes impressions ici. J’en ai commandé quelques autres, dès que je les reçois et que j’ai l’occasion de les tester, je vais les rajouter ici.

Finalement, avec cinq femmes formidables, j’ai commandé un échantillon de tous les pigments d’artistes de Jackson…. alors à un moment donné, je vous en reparlerai également. Mais bon…. tant de projets!

(toute la traduction n’est pas encore là, mais je l’ajoute, promis)

What is Jackson’s Art supplies?

Jackson’s Art Supplies is a UK-based retailer, with a huge selection of art supplies across many art practices : painting, engraving, drawing… they have so many things! Some I need to order online on Jackson’s art’s website because the are not offered locally (I am in Quebec, Canada).

The few times I personally have had to contact the customer service at Jackson’s, I’ve always found them quite helpful. Despite the time differences and some pressure with added online orders and all, truly, I’m happy.

Jackson’s Art Supplies est un magasin de matériel d’artiste basé au Royaume-Uni avec une sélection impressionnante d’articles pour une multitude de pratiques : la peinture, la gravure, le dessin…. ils ont tellement de choix! Certaines choses, je dois les commander via Jackson’s parce qu’elles ne sont pas offertes localement (je suis au Québec, Canada).

Les quelques fois où j’ai eu affaire avec le service à la clientèle, je les ai toujours trouvés serviables. Et ce, malgré les différences de fuseau horaire et la pression additionnelle des commandes en-ligne. Les délais ne sont évidemment plus ceux “d’avant”, mais cela est très respectable.

affiliate links

MOST of the links in this article are affiliate links, they are identified throughout the post. This means I will earn a small commission on each order, at no extra cost to you. 

However, if you would rather not support me and look for the products without going though my affiliate links, no hard feelings. Just go to the Jackson’s supplies website (no affiliate) and search for the product by name.

However, if you would rather not support me and look for the products without going though my affiliate links, no hard feelings. Just go to the Jackson’s supplies website (no affiliate) and search for the product by name.

10% off your first order at Jackson’s art supplies

If you are a new customer to Jackson’s and order through one of my affiliate links, you will have a one time discount of 10% on your first order!

Si vous êtes un nouveau client chez Jacskon’s, et que vous commandez via un des liens de cet article, vous obtiendrez un rabais de 10 % sur cette première commande.

Jackson’s watercolor papers

Jackson’s watercolor papers are made of tree fibers, and not cotton. However, these papers perform very well. Even with quite a bit of water. I really enjoy using them.

• The texture of the papers is very smooth and soft
• On the cold press and rough papers especially, the water is absorbed and doesn’t stay too long on the paper (a plus for me!)
• On the hot press paper, easy to make several washes of paint, very smooth to add line work
• And most cool of all features : they come in blocks!
• The blocks are offered in so many sizes!!!

Yup. The coolest feature is that they come into blocks. This means that the paper is glued on four sides. There is a small space t the top of the block in which you insert a spatula or some flat tool to detach the page.

The advantage of the sheets being glued like this is that the paper is less prone to bucking when painting on it. No need to tape it down. This is a feature you often see on cotton and high end papers, rarely on cellulose paper (in fact, I can’t think of one).

I’ve been using these papers a lot lately. I really need for the post to bring me my next order though…. ’cause I’m running low!!!

• Jackson’s watercolor paper blocks

Jackson’s synthetic brushes

Jackson’s also carries a wide range of synthetic hair brushes. The Studio synthetic line, and Raven brushes are 100% synthetic hair. Do be mindful that the Icon line is a mix of real sable hair and synthetic hair. If you want to be 100% synthetic, do be careful.

I’ve not done a very very serious testing of these brushes, but I reach for them the most often. Thanks to these relatively abordable brushes, I’ve been able to identify I am most comfortable with the synthetic sable hair brushes, rather than the synthetic squirrel hair brushes. They are more stiff, and better for detailed work.

The two icon brushes (synthetic mix) have been with me for a while and I paint almost daily with them. Their point is still very good and I truly love them.

• Jackson’s Studio line brushes – Synthetic hair
• Jackson’s Synthetic Sable and Synthetic mix sable brushes (at the time of writing this, synthetic hair only on the quills and mottler brushes, mix with natural hair in the others)
• Jackson’s Synthetic squirrel brushes

Also, if you buy brushes online, do look up the the detailed info on the sizes. Jackson’s has nice pictures with a ruler to show the sizes of the brushes.

Look in my picture below, a Raven size 6 (the very large one!) and the icon pointed round size 6 (just about the Quill 4) have little in common in terms of size. And I learned that the hard way! I hadn’t looked at the nice sizing charts….

In conclusion

All the products I tested from the Jackson’s brand, I enjoyed very much. I do not have 20 years of painting in me, but I have painted almost daily for the last 2 years and these brushes have played a very large part in this practice.

If ever your experience with these is different than mine, let me know! I always love to hear all point of views.

Remember that if you are a new customer to Jackson’s and order through one of my affiliate links, you will have a one time discount of 10% on your first order!

Rappelez-vous que si vous êtes un nouveau client chez Jacskon’s, et que vous commandez via un des liens de cet article, vous obtiendrez un rabais de 10 % sur cette première commande.

I won’t get into the whole discussion of single vs multi pigment colors today, I simply wanted to share a project I made with my little swatches. But if this topic interests you, here is a great read about Why you should (or should not) stick to single pigments in watercolor? by Lee Angold.

This post is a way to share my explorations, it is not quite a theoric explanation of color mixing! So please enjoy it with its qualities and limits.

This posts contains some affiliate links that are identified as such. If you buy something from these links I will earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Main objectives : Saving money and Color study

The main idea I wanted to explore was the following: in theory, if you buy the single pigment tubes of paints, then surely you should be able to mix all the other colors in a company’s range of paints, thus saving money. Right? Well yes and no!

My second goal doing this was to get a better understanding and knowledge about colors. When I started Huevember by Denise Soden, I was amazed to learn that Sap green was not a single pigment color, but that each marker and brand seemed to have their own recipe for it. It got me wanting to learn more.

The project : using the Daniel Smith’s Dotcard

So I wanted to see if I could do this using my Daniel Smith’s dot card (affiliate link). I had already used the sample dots to see the colors, but I was searching for a fun project to make with the rest of the dots. And for many colors, there are that much, so the project had to be small!

I first printed out the color chart for all 238 Daniel Smith’s watercolors. It has the pigment info on them. And then, proceeded to paint small swatches on Legion Stonehenge (affiliate link) 1 inch by 1 1\2 inch little rectangles.

It was a bit of a long adventure, but I did appreciate the exercise. Though the size of the swatches is small, it is big enough to give you an idea if you appreciate painting with that particular color.

I ended up with a great result. Go check my Instagram posts about them to see the little cards all lined up by color.

Being the nerd I am… the first thing I tried to make what a sort of map of all the colors in a somewhat color wheel way… My plan was to put the single pigments and under them, the mixed ones. It worked well with yellow/oranges/reds…. but the bottom half of the page ended up a bit too crowded. In the end, it did help me study the colors. I have plans to transform this into a colored version…. will be much more interesting.

Single vs Multiple pigment hues

I looked at single pigments. Throughout the collection, I noted every pigment that was used. Interesting fact, 4 pigments (noted in the bottom) were not available as single pigment colors. There goes the “you can mix any colors with the single pigment colors”. Of course, there is the possibility I made a mistake. ahha!

Then, I looked to visually put all the single pigment paint swatches together. On the following pictures, the top row are mixed pigment colors. The bottom row are single pigment colors. I was surprises to see there were many more of those than of the mixed pigments!

Multiple pigment hues

So in my sketchbook, I also planned, with some examples, how to visualize mixed pigment hues.

The easiest combination: two colors making a third. That is pretty straight forward. This is the case for the famous Quinacridone gold, which is made with a mix of P048 – Quinacridone burnt orange and PY150 – Nickel Azo Yellow (one of my favorite colors!).

But then you realize sometimes, two colors make more than one mix. That is the case with the PO48 and PY150, which are also used to make Quinacridone deep gold. Oh well then…. that is good news because that means if I buy tubes of two colors, I can then mix 4 of the colors of the range. Very neat!

And then, I started to look at more complicated colors, which use more than two single pigments. And that’s where it gets interesting… though a little confusing!

Lets start with a simple one : Sap green. I had mentioned in at the beginning of this post. Daniel Smith’s sap green is made out of three pigments : P048 – Quinacridone burnt orange, PG7 – Phthalo Green and PY150 – Nickel Azo Yellow. Now that might get a little more complicated to mix on a regular basis to the exact shade.

Which is why those mixed pigment colors are often called Convenience mixes. If you use them a lot, then by all means, buy a tube because you might turn mad trying to reach that exact shade every time you feel like using that hue.

Multiple hues in single pigments

When I started to get interested into color theory I learned about pigment numbers. I thought I had the key to something: well there is a pigment number, this must mean that all of those pigments are the same hue/color….. Boy was I wrong! It couldn’t be THAT simple, right!

Where it gets really confusing, is when you get to PY43, PBr7, PR101 and such. For those pigment “families”, there are multiple shades. In the pictures below, I grouped the swatches by pigment number. And you will see some big variations between them! (please keep in mind those pictures might not be totally calibrated, but pay attention to the difference between the swatches rather than the colors itself).

A complicated mix!

So let’s take a complicated example: Olive Green. The info on this tube of colors is that it is mixed with PY97, Pb29, PBr7. So great, if I want to save some money, I’ll grab these three tubes. I’ll be able to mix this olive green color and probably many others, right?

Only problem is there are two PB29 in the Daniel Smith’s line and seven PBr7, wight if you count Van Dyck Brown that is a mix of all of those itself. And who says the pigments that go into the mix are the exact ones going into the making of this olive green? You see where I’m going with this?

Word of the end?

I believe this exercise has made me understand colors better. I love warm yellows and I love colors that are mixed with warm yellows. It would make sense for me to stock up on tubes of single pigment warm yellows.

I also love colors mixed with such yellows. So with a few chosen colors, I might end up being able to mix tons of superb hues that I will use and love.

However, convenience mixes are there for a reason. And if you look at some colors like that Olive Green, if it is a color you love to use, by all means jump on the convenience tube because seriously, you might get a little frustrated mixing to match that perfect shade! Especially if you ever use the wrong mixing color….

What do you think?

(there is an update at the end of the article about follow up from the company)

Please see this story as a general warning to be mindful before jumping in head over heels in to a project.

Before you read this, please understand I am more mad at myself for not doing my due diligence on this project, topping it with offering free advertising (to my then not that many followers, but still, sorry!). I am not in the habit of ranting (especially publicly), and I don’t think the company did anything totally bad. But the fact that the whole thing is based on not very authentic engagement still gets to me.

And also, the worst customer service ever.

In the beginning : the beautiful project

It was spring. I was starting to get seriously into watercolors after a year of dabbling and collecting paints colors. By this point, I had nice artisanal watercolors, I did not however have a nice set of brushes.

Through insta-friends, I saw this Kickstarter campaign about eco-friendly brushes. For an ok price (still 35 english pounds though, so not cheap), you could save the world by buying brushes made with ecological bamboo instead of wood, which apparently grows too slowly to be ecoanything as presented by this campaign. And of cours, the brushes had synthetic bristles because cruelty free is better.

It had a picture of a pool, artist grade mention (maybe I imagined that one), eco friendly and cruelty free features, instafriends endorsement, kickstarter aura….. I plunged into the adventure without a second thought.

My natural instinct of researching stuff first was absent that day, for some reason. You gotta understand…. my natural ways are usually to research stuff until I end up not making a decision. But the company also stated they had already sourced the materials and were ready to go into production. And they had before made other brush sets, so really, what could be the risks?

There are no risks in terms of production, we have already sourced materials and made up products samples. We’re ready to bring this to market!

From the Kickstarter project description

I even promoted the campaign on the gram (sorry for those who bought because of me!). I truly believed. We were excited together and even talked about it.

I had only backed one other campaign before at that point. Things went very smoothly with regular updates and delivery smack on schedule. Perhaps the product was easier to manufacture.

First question marks

We all thought the campaign would end up not being funded. And that point, we were bummed. We all posted on social to help get the campaign funded in those last 24 hours… it worked! In the last 24 hours, the missing 40% of the objective was reached. Yay!

Now that I look at the final numbers, it leaves me with questions…. 66 contributors with a total of 5147 pounds. That’s an average of 78 pounds each. But many of us did not pledge that much.

If you take the 62 contributions you can see on the Kickstarter page of the project, with the amount needed for the pledge of their reward tier, it totals 1940 pounds (estimate based on the minimum pledge for each reward tier). Which leaves over 60% or 3200 pounds to the another 4 contributors.

But it’s not against the rules to have generous backers in the last hours.

Slow updates

The fun of supporting a campaign on Kickstarter is that you get previews and you feel like you made that project possible, that you actually had an impact. In this case, I think we actually only made a very very early preorder.

The other benefit is that you usually have a better price because you help the project get “kickstarted”. In this case, we maybe got a few bucks off the retail price. But after all the pre-launch, free shipping and cyber monday sales that happened since then, even if we got the best price for the set, the feeling of having had a special deal is certainly gone.

And the updates. That was difficult….. the company only posted a few updates when people posted about not having any. Or after missing deadlines by a few weeks. And at some point, shipping started. Without even a mention on the Kickstarter platform. Surprise! People started receiving them before we knew they were shipped.

The product itself : not great

Well. After all. If the product is great, then all is forgiven, right? Well in short, it is not great. They are probably good craft level, maybe student level brushes.

A brush cannot be artist grade for oil, acrylics and watercolors all at the same time. That is the promise on the box. As I said, I should’ve checked first. Craftamo does not make professional watercolor brushes…. And again, they use the term “premium”, not “professional artist quality” on them. My bad.

I am not yet a pro, far from it. I cannot assess with certainty how much they are not professional. I just know that for the amount of money, considering how many small brushes there are, and how small even the bigger brushes are, I could have better spent my money.

And for many of the brushes I have received, some have crooked hairs, one had stray hairs and the sizes seem weird (look at the 0 vs its neighbors in the above pic).

But most notably, the ferrule (the part that holds the hair in place) is not centered with the brushes. That makes for an awkward position in the hand when you paint. I have made a video comparing different brands of brushes I own, but this is not normal. You can see the video on my instagram post on the brushes. You can also see my friend Rincs’ video on her patreon post.

The eco-friendly-ishness of the brushes

First of all, after all that concern with the eco-friendly positioning of the brushes, replace possible sustainable wood by bamboo, the box they come in is a statement in over packaging. Yet it is a beautiful box, but wasteful in my opinion. Especially since many of the brushes are not straight to begin with!

And if you google “Is bamboo more sustainable than wood“, you find there it some debate. Especially since the rush towards bamboo seems to have created some less than desirable effects in some places. But again, those are questions I could have asked before throwing myself into this adventure.

The worst customer service ever

In good faith, I raised my concerns directly to Dan Worthington (or Dan Worthy on his travel account), founder of Craftamo and apparently a nice guy.

He tells me he is happy I reached to them first instead of “going public”.

After a few exchange, he told me only 3 of other people had issues of all the people they sent the brushes to, which make me the 4th. Weird, that I happen I know 3 others who are not happy plus two people from Kickstarter whom I dont know. And then we saw others on Instagram.

Anysway, Dan told me that he was “going to share the videos with our team”. Even asked me to tell him exactly which brushes had issues. I thought this sounded promising and that they were looking into the issue. And I wildly thought I might get others brushes.

Dan then asked to write an email to support. I thought it was to better follow the issue. I obliged. That was on December 17th. I thought I would let the holidays pass before following up.

At the end of January, I reached out again. And a few times since then. There are no more answers on instagram….

I went to check the status on my support ticket today. I found out the support ticket had been closed…

… two months ago!

….

And an instafriend who had been through the commenting on their products found out she was blocked from their instagram! Wow! She only politely reviewed the product.

Since then, Rincs wrote a Patreon post on this! She finds it hilarious. I guess that’s how you have to take it! And by the way, Craftamo, in a very mature response, has blocked her from seing their account on Instagram! For simply writing an honest review on a product.

So I’m not holding my breath on hearing back from the company.

Word of the end

Beware of the power of marketing.

That is all. From a company with a strong social media presence and what seems to be genuine engagement and concern for artists and the environment, well, I expected quality brushes and an honest exchange with the issues. Because after all, shit does happen. How you deal with it is where you see a difference. Here, Caftamo just hides it instead of addressing it.

I leave feeling like an idiot for falling into the trap of an ordinary product clothed into marketing wohoo and a beautiful shiny box.

Coming from a company who “advises” artists as how to market themselves to companies (and then sells them exposure!), maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise.

So this long piece helps put this behind me. I have said all I needed. I am not angry anymore (I think, I’m trying really really hard!). This brushes are being sent to somebody who might enjoy them for what they are and I will not be sad every time I see them in my home.

More info on Craftamo

I leave these with you. These are simply for your information. They are not to be taken directly as the cause of the failures of this adventure. However, all taken together, they reinforce my belief that this company is marketing first, quality of product, well, much further down the list.

• Dan Worthington‘s travel instagram account (15 months traveling non-stop…. congrats! might explain a few things. To be fair though, some people make it work the travelling while working)
• Craftamo’s Advertising page… for artists who want to advertise to be featured on Craftamo’s socials and website! (yes you read that right, artists who want to pay Craftamo to be featured, not Craftamo sponsoring artists)
• The Kickstarter campaign for Cruelty-Free, Eco-Friendly Bamboo Brushes for Artists

Edit 24 hours later

So, after posting the link to this article on Instagram, and I guess seeing all the people commenting of similar issues with customer service, and an intervention by Vanessa from The Sprout Creative and @vanessa_paints_ on Instagram, I received an email, a refund on Kickstarter and DMs in Instagram.

This is the email I received from the Customer Happiness department.

The company representative has told me that they would resolve any issues with people who addressed the issues with them. So even if you are still waiting on an answer, the best course of action might be to write to them again to verify that your claim/request is taken care of. You can fill out the form on the website or write directly to support@craftamo.com.

I still think this is the way Craftmo has acted since the beginning of this project: acting only when people are getting frustrated publicaly. Good customer service is to be proactive about issues your customers have, and not simply react when there is bad press.

Edit a few weeks later

Actually, I’m writing this at the end of May. With COVID and all, I totally forgot to update this more.

In the end, the follow-up from Craftamo where kind of crap.

• They issued a refund to my Kickstarter pledge, after I wrote a bad review for their product on the product. Then, they asked for their product back being sent at my own expense, though I had written in this exact article that I had sent to someone else….
• Among the people who contacted me, a lot were offered discounts on future purchases, instead of refunds or discounts on the purchase the person was not happy with.
• Most were told that if they had tested their brush, they could not be returned for refund because they could not then be resold. I think the company is missing the point between defective product vs not liking the product.