#dr ph martens concentrated watercolors

[fagboyfriend]

house party but its really t4t

[doodlewash]

Dr Ph Martin’s Liquid Watercolors are the most other-worldly, whimsical, airy and light-catching, phantasmagoric liquid watercolors I have found. And, they should definitely not be confused with Dr Martens, making equally trendy shoes which are however characterised by almost opposite properties to those listed above.

These beautiful, precious little glass bottles containing pure, vibrant, modern-looking hues of liquid watercolours are generally not for the outdoorsy or Urban Sketcher: too heavy and dangerous, unless used to fill watercolour pens. Nor really are they for the someone often working on the fly. No, these luxury-feeling items are rather for the home watercolorist. One who can make leisurely use of their time, a rare and exotic character in our rushed modern world, and is seeking to pack a punch in their colour palette.

One should also own one or several enamel or porcelain palettes as these products are so concentrated they will stain plastic ones permanently even on first use. Finally, liquid watercolours are probably not a beginner’s item because of their cost and especially because they require confident brush strokes and acceptance of unplanned colour effects. Indeed they are, unlike traditional watercolours, permanent from the instant they hit the paper. So permanent in fact that they dry much closer to their wet colour than traditional watercolours and fade very slowly to not at all (depending on the line used) upon exposure to daylight.

Dr Ph Martin’s Hydrus Fine Art Liquid Watercolors

This being said though, in researching this piece online, I found many links to parent/teacher training in how to guide children, even very young ones, on how to mess about with cheaper versions of them. I bought my first set of 12 Hydrus Fine Art Watercolor, 0.5 OZ, SET 1 having been told they were the world’s best liquid watercolours. There are three sets in this range which specifically carries smaller bottles, hence nearly halving the initial cash outlay. I was certainly not disappointed, but initially I used them rarely, mostly because I wasn’t sure how to use them.

That changed when I took a course by Camilla Damsbo on Skillshare, during which I painted the Koi fish picture shown here. I discovered they are spectacular for wet-on-wet painting and for mixed media work, here juxtaposed against pan Payne’s Gray and also combined with metallic watercolours. 

Dr Ph Martin’s Radiant Concentrated Liquid Watercolors

However, I truly fell head over heals over my Hydrus set when I took another Skillshare tutorial, this time by Amarilys Henderson on loose florals. Check out that tulip, dahlia and anemone taken from it (below). They illustrate how great they are for on page wet-on-wet mixing and layering. That’s when I decided to complement my Hydrus set with a few bottles in the yellow-orange-red-pink Radiant range since I so love painting flowers.

I can’t honestly see the difference between the Hydrus and Radiant ranges (and there’s little information provided on the Dr Ph Martin website), other than the latter being slightly less concentrated and hence often having a smaller dynamic range, as per the pictures above.

Dr Ph Martin’s Bombay Inks

I think the Bombay Ink range is probably much the same, except even more concentrated. I haven’t personally tried their Bombay Ink range but I am told it otherwise behaves very similarly to the other two ranges.

The Art Of Mixing

Finally, when I discovered the loose florals work and online lessons of Kris Keys (orchid below), I learnt they are really powerful when combined with traditional watercolours, when they generate long, homogenous gradient washes showing great depth upon dilution.

The mixing of liquid colours with conventional tube watercolors is shown immediately below. The lines are pure Hydrus watercolors. The rectangles on the right are tube watercolor gradient washes. Arrows indicates how colours were mixed, approximately 1:1. The middle row displays gradient washes resulting from those mixes. Note how the two top ones are longer and more homogeneous than the tube alone gradients on the right and how in the bottom one a sort of perspective effect is obtained by the dyes separating through diffusing at slightly different rates.

What’s more, they come in a huge diversity of hues (56 in the Radiant range including 12 metallic/iridescent/fluorescent ones, 36 for the Hydrus and 24 for Bombay Ink with preselected sets and individual bottles always available) each slightly different to the next and imminently miscible. Thanks to the eye drop dosers incorporated in each lid, such mixes are then are quite reproducibly obtained if one simply remembers to take note the initial mixes one made.

Since then, I’m totally hooked on this form of alchemy! I even downloaded the convenient Dr Ph Martin App (I kid you not!) on my phone so I can check out their colour ranges and order more anywhere, anytime. Equally convenient, their website offers a system to select your bottles according to their many positive characteristics. Happy painting!

REVIEW: "Dr Ph Martin’s Liquid Watercolors" by Ariel Blocker - #doodlewash #WorldWatercolorGroup #watercolor #watercolour Dr Ph Martin’s Liquid Watercolors are the most other-worldly, whimsical, airy and light-catching, phantasmagoric liquid watercolors I have found.

[fagboyfriend]

🌈✨💖♿️

[ID: A traditional watercolor painting. The painting is of two queer men meeting in a bar. The one on the left has short, wavy black hair and faint facial hair. He is relaxed, leaning in his wheelchair while holding a can. He is wearing a white tank top that falls to the side to expose his top surgery scars, and shorts. He is smiling. The man on the right is standing and smiling nervously while blushing. He has longer red hair shaved on one side, and has a feeding tube, an ostomy bag with a rainbow cover and is using glittery forearm crutches. He is wearing a black tshirt with a pink triangle and a star of david necklace. His shirt is cropped, and he has a fishnet shirt on underneath. He is wearing tight black jeans with two patches, one on either knee. one is of a spring of lavender, while the other is a green carnation. He also has a magenta bandana tied around his neck. He has two small buttons on his shirt, likely of political messages. The Bar the two are standing in is vibrant. It has a sloped exposed wood cealing, covered in fairy lights and rainbow lanterns. The floor is pink and purple checkerboard, with a purple bar with stacked glasses and bottles behind it. There is also a red loveseat with two heart covered pillows on it, and a neon sign in the shape of a heart emoji covering a rainbow flag. The entire peice is vibrantly colored, with glitter, gloss, and metalic elements. end ID.]

A traditional redraw of this old peice. I like their designs a lot better now and had fun playing with my new liquid watercolors.