Viviva Colorsheet Watercolors Review
Viviva Colorsheet Watercolors Review.
A month or so ago, perhaps a little bit longer, I was contacted by a company asking me to review the Viviva Colorsheet Watercolors and of course I was more than happy to do so. As always, I have to be 100% honest with you and tell you, when I first got the sheets I was very dubious about the product.
I am in no way, what I would call, proficient in watercolors; I love watercolors, I love the paintings watercolor artists create and l really enjoy playing about with my own watercolors learning. I am definitely much more comfortable with colored pencils, markers and watercolor pencils, I personally think it is the control thing. With a pencil or marker, I have much more control of the medium than I do with traditional watercolors.
Viviva Colorsheets Characteristics
The Viviva Colorsheets are an absolutely fantastic concept, for the watercolor artist, out and about, the entire 16 range of watercolors fit in the back pocket of your Jeans. They are perfect for taking with you to a coffee shop along with your watercolor journal and paint the world as it passes you by.
All 16 colors are presented in a reporter style notebook format, with an over all dimension of 7cm by 13.5cm and approximately 0.5cm thick which is incredible when you think about it. Or if you would prefer the dimensions in inches, two and three quarter inches by five and a half inches and a quarter inch thick.
As you open the Viviva Colorsheets you are presented with a section to add your personal details should you lose or accidentally leave the paints on the coffee shop table. Adjacent is a very clear, simple and easy to follow set of instructions.
After this you are presented with approximately 4.5cm by 6cm pads of watercolor pigments or 1.5 inches by 2.5 inches; two pads each on every page. Placed between each page that has the watercolor pads on them is a partition of water repellant coated sheets, which look similar to tracing paper. The purpose of these waterproof sheets is really quite important and is what makes this concept work so nicely.
If the waterproof sheets were not present between each page, when closing the pages, the colors on either page would merge together, sticking when drying and contaminating individual colors. The waterproof sheets work very well in this sense and no matter how wet the watercolor pads are after use, if you close the pad completely, other than a little bit of paint getting on the waterproof sheets, nothing else happens, no sticking and no paint contamination.
Immediately under each watercolor pad, there is a space to swatch your color so that you have a true representation of the color when painting. There is also a color swatch of the colors at the bottom of each page which acts as your easy guide to access the colors you require.
On the very back of the Viviva Colorsheets, there is a separate piece of card that you can, if you like, peel of the sticky adhesive and attach it to the pad cover, this now acts as a very simple palette for mixing your colors and it is designed in such a way, that no matter what color you use, the palette is easily accessible so that mixing is very simple.
Viviva Colorsheet Performance
One of the main concerns I had about the Viviva Colorsheet Watercolors when I first opened them was the amount of paint that you would get or lack of paint. As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, I am not a proficient or professional watercolor artist, so I am only used to eyeballing half pans or full pans and seeing the amount of paint in them. Although the Viviva watercolor pads within the pad are large, they are just like sheets of paper, very little depth whatsoever to them.
However, I can tell you that there is a lot of paint help within the pads. I can’t tell you exactly how they would stack up against say a half pan, but I can tell you that I swatched the colors, created four A4 paintings and there was two colors that I used all the time and never ran out, but I will talk more about the colors in just a second.
I was really quite impressed with the level of watercolor paint held within these square pads. At first glance the names of the colors do not in any way shape or form marry up with the colors that you can actually see on the watercolor pad. for example, before you activate the Peacock Blue pad, it looks a pinkish purple color.
It is worth mentioning that in the instruction section at the beginning of the Viviva watercolor pad, they make it very clear that the colorsheets may actually look different to when you activate the paint and use it, hence the reason they provide the section under each square to create your own swatch.
The first thing I completed was my own color swatch on my own watercolor paper and for me this is were the issues started. As you can see from the swatch I created below, some of the colors do not look like the colors I was expecting.
The 16 colors present in the Viviva Colorsheets are, and this is the order as you open and flick through the pad. Crimson, Deep Pink, Vermillion, Dusk Orange, Chrome Yellow, Gold Ochre and not Gold Orchid as I mentioned in the YouTube video review of this set. Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna, Light Green, Sap Green, Viridian, Peacock Blue, Persian Blue, Violet, Magenta and Slate Black.
As you can see from the swatch, the Burnt Umber and Burnt Sienna do not look like those colors, the Burnt Sienna would be the closest but definitely not the Burnt Umber. Both these colors appeared more orange to me and so this meant that the Vermillion, Dusk Orange, Chrome Yellow, Gold Ochre, Burnt Umber and Burnt Sienna all look like variations of orange. That is 6 orange based colors out of 16. The Crimson and Deep Pink look incredibly similar as well.
I think, the problem fo me might have been the strength of the pigments, every color in this set is so vibrant, the colors on their own are absolutely gorgeous, they really are, however, as an overall palette I was stumped as to what I could paint with them.
I found the Blues to be so very dark and trying to lighten them without a lighter color such as white, was above my expertise as a watercolor painter. I flicked through some of my watercolor books to see how I could lighten some of the colors and other than just adding more water, which was also difficult to do given just how strong the pigments are, I found it really difficult. This left me thinking that only on the bases of the palette, this set might be better suited to a more proficient watercolor artist.
I don’t think this particular palette is well suited to a new watercolor artist or someone who just wants to paint a quick landscape or botanical piece. Without a good understanding of color theory and watercolor mixing, I fear this palette was too difficult for me to work with.
This was why I ended up doing four different paintings and at the end of this I still didn’t produce anything that was worthy of adding it to the review as a speed painting demonstration. The only thing I could think of to paint was a red Poppy, which you can see, I used the Crimson, Deep Pink, Vermillion, Light Green, Sap Green and a tiny little bit of slate black just to darken the greens. Incidentally, the light green and sap green in the set are absolutely gorgeous colors.
However, I wasn’t able to create too much in the way of light and dark areas of the Poppy and so there is very little depth to the painting at all. In all honesty, like I have already mentioned, this is all perhaps more to do with my lack of knowledge for the medium, a professional watercolor artist may well have been able to create the same painting with much better depth and clarity.
Viviva Colorsheet Prices
The Viviva Colorsheet on its own, with 16 different colors will cost you approximately £15.47 plus shipping which will depend on where you live. the prices I am quoting are directly from the company website. Alternatively they have put together different packs that you can buy which you can view by following the link to the website.
For artist in the US, the single Viviva Colorsheet of 16 colors will cost you $20 plus shipping and the same applies with regards to the various packages that you can purchase.
For artists in the EU, you would pay approximately €17 for the single Viviva Colorsheet of 16 colors.
You can also purchase the Viviva Colorsheets on Amazon but they are slightly more expensive costing approximately £27, at least the ones I have been able to locate, so it is cheaper to purchase directly from the company website which I have of course linked to.
Viviva Colorsheets Lightfast Information
As things currently stand, I am unable to establish any lightfast information pertaining to the Viviva Colorsheets. I have sent an information to the company requiting the information but as of yet not received a reply however I am well aware that the company is incredibly busy coming up to Christmas. If or when they reply I will of course up date this section as appropriate.
Viviva Colorsheets Conclusion
I personally think the concept of the Viviva Colorsheet watercolors is fantastic, 16 individual watercolor paints that when closed up in their reporter notebook format cam slip into the back pocket of your jeans. With the waterproof sheets in-between each colorsheet, there is no muddying or mixing of the paints when wet nor is there any sticking of the sheets when the paints are wet, closed and put away and then dry.
The overall strength of the pigments is incredible, in fact they remind me of a concentrated version of watercolors, to some extent their strength may actually be their weakness for some artists. The only issue I personally had with the Viviva Colorsheets was, the actual palette, the colors selected to make up the sixteen individual colors. Some of them were too similar according to my eye, some did not look anything like the colors they claimed to be such as the Burnt Umber and to a slightly lesser extent the Burnt Sienna.
I said that this was an issue to me personally because I feel that I only struggled with the palette due to my lack of watercolor understanding. I believe that for a professional watercolor artist, the struggles with the palette would not be the same, mixing and lightening the colors would be perhaps achievable. I do think that if another palette was available, the set would absolutely appeal to a wider group, artists in the same ability as myself. A more simple palette such as White, Lemon Yellow, Cadmium Yellow, Light Red, Alizarin Crimson, Vermillion, Orange Hue, Sap Green, Hookers Green, Burnt Umber, Yellow Ochre, Raw Umber, Ultramarine Blue, Cobalt Blue, Paynes Grey, I know a palette like this may be classed as quite boring, but I do feel it would appeal to a lot more people and they would be able to tackle a lot more subjects.
I have completed a YouTube Video review of the Viviva Colorsheets which you can watch, unfortunately for this review I have not provided a speed painting video or images of artwork. After trying to create four different botanical or Landscape paintings with the and struggling quite a bit with colors, I was only able to complete a semi decent Poppy. However, even this painting lacked depth due to very little distinction between the darks and lights.
