Hello!

Who here paints with watercolours? What's your favourite brand of paint? What brushes do you like? Synthetic, or sable? Do you have a preferred brand of paper? What weight? Natural white, or bright white?

To answer my own questions...! I've been painting for a while now, but I'm constantly looking for tips and pointers and I'm always hoping to get better. I prefer Winsor & Newton as well as QoR, though there's a special love in my heart for Dr. Ph. Martin's Hydrus Watercolours. I love Princeton Neptune (synthetic) brushes with all of my heart, but I have a set of Escoda Kolinsky Sables and they paint pretty snazzily. So far I usually paint on Arches cold pressed 140lb, natural white.

My favorite brand of paint that I used is whatever it was that I used in a painting class I took in high school. It just worked so well and the colors were so bright. I wish I could remember what it was called. Nowadays I just use this travel set that I got at Michaels, I think it was Raphael. They're alright, sometimes I find that the color gets really washed out even though I layer on quite a bit. Usually I like to use synthetic brushes, but for detail I like natural ones, I feel that it holds color better than most synthetic ones that I use. As far as paper goes, I just bought a little watercolor sketchbook, I haven't got too much money to spend on it.

I think I'm gonna check out some of the brands you mentioned though.