After making a sheet of butterflies while playing around with my new QoR mini pan set, I decided to try similar pages with Schmincke and Daniel Smith paints. I didn’t have/use all the same colors, so it isn’t a complete comparison… really I wanted to compare how the paints move, and the results were as expected. I did these on Arches cold pressed 140 lb block paper. (You can see my original review of the QoR watercolor mini pans HERE.)

The QoR paint is so crazy fun… it spreads lightning fast in spidery tendrils as soon as the tip of the brush touches the wet paper. This is exciting and entertaining… and really useful sometimes.

The Daniel Smith paints flow and blend nicely, but slowly. It’s much easier to control and allows time to lead the paint, to some extent. The granulating effect of some of the colors is impressive, and I know they have quite a few colors with strong granulation.

The Schmincke paint spreads a little more quickly than Daniel Smith but not at all like QoR, and feels so decadent while I’m using it.

Really, all three worked well, and the color shift when dry was similar for all. There are several colors in the Daniel Smith set and the Schmincke set that I really really love, and I know in time I will find many more. And then the QoR are just so FUN and playful.

So now I have three pages of butterflies.

Well, they were fun, and I’m a little more familiar with my paints. But all I really learned is that I might need more colors. Yeah. That.