Absolute beginner here. I started with a cheap (crappy) pan set. Was discouraged and gave up right away. Got given a set of tube paint for Christmas so decided to have another try. Squeezed a small blob into the pallet grooves and used a wet brush to dab at the top of the blob and put brush to paper. Was much happier with that. So now my mission is to watch a bunch of your videos and hopefully produce something viable within the next few weeks. So grateful I found your channel. Cheers from Australia 🇦🇺 ❤

A great lesson a true teacher! Thank you from a retired teacher

My favorite method is to put my tube paint into half pans into my own small pallet. I like painting from that. Sometimes I'll squeeze a bit of another color onto my mixing area if I need it.

Started with watercolor pencils because of the style of art I do (detailed botanicals). Then added a Gonsai palette with beautiful full pans. Just got my first tube paints and decided to do M Graham because I want that silky smooth feel I got when I inherited my late mom’s Sennelier travel palette. Admittedly, it’s a learning curve, but the smooth gorgeous silky texture is worth it to me.

Thanks Kristy! That is the best video I've ever seen on pans vs. Tubes. Pan person here. Tubes are great becase you can pour several pans to put into various pallets. 😀

😂🤣 so funny, long line of tube paint…. Love it !

Thank you for that! Now I know why my paints from Daniel Smith are shrinking in pans 😅

i am also a tube fan, its easy enough to pan and cure them if you want. Now i know why my 1 tube of sennelier opera rose stays sticky, i was going to give it away!! thanks for that.

I started with cakes because it was what I could afford. Now as a grownup with my own income, I've stuck to mostly poured pans as I do most of my watercolors outside, but if I'm home and working on something where i'm covering a lot of canvas with a particular color, I use that color straight from the tube. I'm not very patient for pouring pans, but it's the best way to make a custom palette of the colors I want, rather than making do with a pre-arranged set.

Honestly, I'm too lazy for tubes. I love a good pan set. I'm tubed out with acrylics. So much storage space and rifling through looking for the color you want to squeeze out. I even grabbed a gouache pan set. So much more enjoyable to play around when I'm learning than trying to decide which colors I need to squeeze out. I have a Cottman pan set and a Paul Rubens set that I interchange.

I got my first set of Windsor & Newton tubes for Christmas and although I loved watercolor before, this is my first tube set from a professional brand and it blew my mind 🤯

Have been working for a year now facing my nemesis --- watercolor painting. Have fallen in love with it! Still learning the nuances, have discovered how much I enjoy layering watercolor pencils and markers with the paint. Have made my own pans by squeezing out tubes.

Thank you for this. Of course you always make your videos so much fun to watch while giving a boat load of information easy to understand 😊

I like buying tubes and making my own palettes, I just find it fun haha 😂

Years ago I started with a little cotman travel pan set, painted a lot with it, and replaced pans with tubes or pans as I used them up. Now, I have a few pan sets I still use, and I like to mix my favorite colors from tubes and let them cure.

I can hear my high school art teacher now… “ never use paint straight from the tube”🤣

I have to vote for excruded pans, that's why I'm so excited to receive your palette next week Kristy! Yay!

I started out with tubes and find them really practical for keeping colours clean and switching out colours in my palette. I put a little dot high on the side of the paint well so I can go back to it easily and excess water falls into the part below. Since it is only a dab at a time, I don’t feel like I’m “wasting” good paint if I change out a colour or turn kids loose with the palette.

I tend to be a pan person. I do have some tubes that I squeezed from into pans and let cure, and then my favorites are handmade ones that I got in pans. When I first started with watercolor I did have only tubes, but since my only prior painting experience was acrylic paint I had NO idea what I was doing and stopped pretty quickly. When I finally got my first pan set (a pretty cheap student grade set, pretty sure it was generic brand) after watching some watercolor content makers, something about using the paint from pans clicked and it became my favorite traditional medium really quickly!

I spent the afternoon pouring all my paint into pans so they’ll all be ready. You know, there’s a trick to that.

I have been pouring tubes into pans since day one. I found with tubes I was using way too much paint and perhaps it is the miser in my but, I don't want my paint to be wasted in any way.

Extruded pans look so pretty and perfect to my slightly OCD eyes. Lol 😂 I have also never had issues rewtting Winsor & Newton tube-to-pan paints, and I frequently use one of their most violent offenders- Potter's Pink. Paint straight from the tubes can also gum up your brushes and even damage any (expensive 🤑) natural hair brushes because the fresh gummy paint can become lodged in the base of the bristles and if not completely soaped up and rubbed out after each use, will harden and lead to bristle breakage. (Yikes!! 😱) If anyone wants to use honey based paints in a more travel friendly way, only pour out a small amount into the bottom of the half pan. Though you'll still need to ensure that your palette stays relatively level while traveling, I've found that this way the paints have a little room to move without toppling over into other colors. Thanks so much for all your shared experience and knowledge! I have learned _far_ more on this channel than any one other watercolor channel alone! 🙏🫶☺️

I'm not liking the watercolor straight from the tube either, seems like I waste a lot of paint. I squeezed it all into a pallette I made out of soda bottle caps and a pencil case. It cracked big time though. I don't remember the brand, they were just laying around the house for years so I got them out finally. The binder and pigment was separated though, so I had to squeeze it all out at once and stir it with a toothpick.

Half pans are my way to go! That's why I designed my own 😅

I have to vote for tubes. When I first started I had grumbauker cakes. It didn't take long to try a student grade pallette. I then tried student grade tubes and it was a huge improvement. The tubes allow me to buy only the colors I need as I learn this form of therapy 😅. Can you tell I paint for the fun factor?😊

My first watercolor tube set was cotmans as well. I used them like acrylics. The whole set lasted 2 paintings 💀

I use a mixture of half pans, full pans and tubes. I mainly use tubes to fill up pans but on the odd occasion I work on a large piece and want to do really big areas of wash it can be easier to mix a large dish of wash using tubes, especially if it’s a wash of a pure colour. But mainly I work on small pieces and pans are much easier to tote around.

Hello, I hope you don't mind, I'm commenting my opinion even though I haven't watched the full video, I just watched the first 30 seconds. That story is hilarious! But anyway, I started out with a beginner set of pans with like 30 freaking colors, but realistically I only use 10 total, 4 for a single painting. And I don't know getting the pans and seeing the colors and being able to visualize them, made it easier to start painting.

Very informative video! Defining and delineating the types was really illuminating. Since I have soooo many tube paints (bought on sale, as I am always bargain hunting), I use them with a Possum Palette and can substitute colors in the palette easily for each painting. For travel (even it is only out to my patio!) a Portable Painter Palette that I filled with tube colors works fine. I did not use any honey based colors, and filled the pans half way. Then blended with a toothpick, let dry and filled the rest of the pan.

I have mostly used pans, but bought some 'spendy Sennelier tubes ... and they don't ever harden lol! I guess that's the point of them with the honey etc Have gone back to pans :D

Love you advice as always.

Hey Kristy. I wasn’t for sure what to call those round things. I’m glad you gave them a name of cakes that makes sense. New Year’s of 2023 last year was when I discovered you and I tried watercolor for the first time so the cakes was what I bought because it was five bucks. I went to Michael’s bought a set of brushes that were cheap. bought a couple of those five dollar cake pallet things and I bought some watercolor paper, because that’s what I did last New Year’s Eve because I wanted to try it out. And that’s when I discovered your channel and it was fun. It was cool I liked it so I have since then this past year invested in better products Paul Rubin, Windsor, in Newton, Cottman and Windsor in Newton professional art for Joy sake pallet that’s yours and some of my colors when I poured them into my pans and let them cure, I didn’t quite do it right so a couple of them did crack which I’m not really worried about. I’m waiting on a couple more professional brands to try. But I’m glad you made this video because it explains a little bit when I was doing my Windsor and Newton pans from the tubes and two or three of the colors cracked. I thought it might’ve just been the paint or maybe that’s just the way it is I didn’t know it don’t matter they paint just fine. Anyway, I’m a hard-working nurse. I don’t get that much time to paint. I’m trying to paint as often as I can. I’m still working on perfecting, brushstrokes and learning how to use the paint brushes. I’m still in the baby stage I guess you could say. And having the time of my life thank you. Love your videos are inspiring and I learn a lot.

You and I very fully agree! Tubes are not for beginners. Again, you're right, they're cakes. I don't like cakes. There's nothing worse growing up than getting crap art supplies like that for a birthday or Christmas. Because I was told I had to be grateful for them. And then I'd get in trouble for giving an honest review when said relative would ask me how I liked them. For context, my family was the kind who'd get you the knock off X brand Star Wars toys that were 'just as good.' And it was frowned upon in my family to acutally speak your mind. You're supposed to just smile like everything is wonderful. I'm sorry, I guess this bothered me more than I realized.

Love tubes. But I pour them into pans and arrange my own pallets. Love honey based but so true can't travel with them. I like working from full pans. I like a big brush I cannot lie. So many paints, so little time. ❤

My vote is tubes but only because you can use them to make custom pans and dried palettes. :) Pans feel like the way watercolor is meant to be.

I was just having this conversation with myself lol. I was getting frustrated trying to follow along some tutorials in books and they talk about how you can use tubes or pans in the supply chapter, but then all the instructions are recommending water amounts/ratios as if you’re using tubes. So my watercolors look so drab and washed out. I think I need to take the concept of “five levels of watercolor consistency” down to about three when using pans and adjust tutorials accordingly.

😂😂 squeeze it allllll out! 🎉

…not me over here having started with cakes 🤡🤷🏻‍♀️ NOW that being said, I’m not doing too badly for starting with glorified chalk hahaha Also putting your brushes on my wishlist-but I might hold out and order when that pretty empty palette Restocks!

LOL. Squeezing out the long line of paint 😅

I think tube color in a pallet grooves is better one. And i like the messages as tags by the sides of the painting. Thank you Kristy mam for such a useful information about colors.🎨

I started with cotmans pans a year or so ago. I might give tubes a try.

Actually, I live in an arid region (humidity generally between 8-15%, averaging about 11%, unless it is storming). I have never had a problem with my M Graham tubes from setting up in a pan, though I do understand that this would not work in a more humid environment. That being said, another reason not to use paint straight from the tube is, if you are messy like me, you will have paint everywhere. I started making my own pans when I realized how much paint i was wasting, having to clean up, etc. I agree with you, pans are the way to go, and with KZfaq and videos like yours, showing the how-to, it is a simple matter to make them. I enjoyed your videos. Thank you.

Kristy, great video! Random question- can you tell me which three Isaro paints you swatched out? The color junky in me needs to know. Lol.

Hello, I have just discovered your channel and Kristy you give me hope, lots of hope. I bought some tube paints, which I will now wait to use until I have become more efficient with Prang Over paint set. However, my question is, the tube paints by Reeves. Can you tell me if this is a good product to start with when I do begin diving into using tubes?

lol I did all these mistakes with tubes as my 1 st watercolors I was going to give up on watercolors 😊 I didn’t

Great video! Do you know of an aluminum full pan watercolor palette that lays flat? I hate the ones that are on an angle when opened. Thank you Kristy!!! :)

This is a great video! I bought tubes to put in pans, and now I know why there's so much cracking in them! 🤦‍♀️ I thought I had waited long enough for the layers to dry. I just did 2 layers. Would it be wiser to do more thin layers? After watching and reading comments, I wonder if people ever mix and combine paint colors in one pan, to make a sort of custom color. Is that s good or bad idea? Thank you!

That custom green-blue-gray that you have on your special palate. Is absolutely beautiful. Like Dark Prismarine. It would make for some ostentatious shadows.

i've been after a palette that has three decently sized mixing sections, you wouldn't happen to still remember what kind/maker yours was?

Ok, I'm just going to ask. I've been painting a year and really WANT a good basic set of my first tubes that includes Payne's gray. Any suggestions? TIA

Blughh cakes are the worst. The chalkiness out me off paining so so much

Hi Kristy, I heard you mispronounce the word Quinacridone, you said Quinadicrone, which is incorrect. I'm sure you want to know that :)