Schmincke Horadam Artist Grade Watercolors – Complete Review

Schmincke Horadam Aquarell is an artist grade watercolor paint brand from Germany that has been a renowned leader of professional watercolors since 1881.

If you’ve explored the world of watercolors and especially artist-grade ranges, I’m almost certain that you’ve heard of Schmincke watercolor paints.

Several watercolorists I know personally swear by Schmincke as the only brand of watercolor paints they use!

Steeped with heritage with their delicate and consistent craftsmenship, it is without a doubt that Schmincke watercolors are one of the best paints on the market.

If you’re considering picking or unsure of whether to pick some Schmincke watercolors up for yourself, here is my all-in-one review to try and help you decide.

Review

What I like

Schmincke Horadam watercolors are extremely high quality, artist grade paints that have been formulated to achieve the highest standard of lightfastness, solubility and stability.

The brand embraces raw materials such as ensuring the optimal amount of ox-gall added to each pigment in order to provide artists absolute control with the distribution of color.

This is crafted alongside extra additives such as cholesterol used to increase flow and control of paints when applied on the page.

With a deep, rich and intense pigment load that you would expect from any ‘artist grade’ watercolor range, you will be delighted to learn that Schmincke has more than 150 catalog colors with an additional 30+ proprietary “speciality” colors available (e.g. mica based metallic colors, super granulating colors.

These watercolor paints are available in 5ml and 15ml tubes, half and full pans that are sold both individually and in sets of up to 48 colors.

Within each set, Schmincke Horadam goes above and beyond in its material choice, ensuring the highest integrity and quality of Gum Arabic used by judiciously selecting the best crop of the year made clear by the absolutely stunning quality of its granulating colors and pigment even when diluted.

Several painters have described these paints as “buttery smooth” and highly creaming that results in a lightfast, matte finish.

What I don’t like

Here’s where Schmincke’s watercolors’ largest drawback comes into play:

It’s price.

As a watercolor line that is essentially dedicated to professionals, this unfortunately comes with a hefty price tag.

However, if you’re willing to splurge a little more on some QUALITY watercolor paints that will last you a (literal) lifetime, I’d definitely recommend you consider and give Schmincke’s watercolors a try with a limited palette.

I believe the best prices for Schmincke’s watercolors are from Jackson’s Art, but make sure to look around in stores such as Blick and Amazon find the best deal you can get.

Additionally, the brand’s watercolors dilute and disperse easily in water which results in a lack of control, disadvantageous to those who do not appreciate a loose hand.

You may also be subject to unexpected blossoming caused by over dilution making techniques such as wet-in-wet, glazes and washes difficult to control.

A small knit pick when it comes to Schmincke’s watercolor pan sets is the larger size of it s palette which can be a little cumbersome when traveling.

Super granulating colors

For Schmincke’s specialty “super granulating” (supergranulierende) colors, you should expect abnormally strong granulation of pigments that leave beautiful textured finishes when dried.

Some of their sets include Forest, Haze, Volcano, Shire, Desert, Galaxy, Glacier, Tundra and Deep Sea.

However, its effects are still quite subtle which can leave the “super granulating” label a little deceiving, as Schmincke’s range fail to reach the same calibre of granulation and color separation of a select few of Daniel Smith and Roman Szmal watercolor paints.

Pros and cons

Pros	Cons
High color variety (150+ colors without the inclusion of exclusive pigments) Strong granulation  Deeply pigmented Larger tube sizing  Long-lasting Ease of reactivation  High granulation Long-lasting	Higher pricing Harder to buy new colors Larger palette size difficult for traveling Harder to blend and may cause patchiness due to blossoming “Super granulating” range has lower color separation than other brands

FAQ