My azaleas outside are pretty scraggly and sad… but they do have some nice blossoms so I wanted to catch them before they are gone!

I have two new sets of paint I’m really excited to play with and share with you. The first I present today…The brand is “Eventually, Everything Mixes” or EEM. Several of her colors are unusual and surprising mixes with really fun, heavy granulation, many are single pigment, and as far as I’ve seen, all are excellent or very good lightfast ratings. (actually while I was checking tonight, I only found excellent)

You can google either EEM or Eventually, Everything Mixes and find them online. The paints are handmade in Germany, individually. The half pans I ordered came filled REALLY full…. quite a bit over the tops of the pans. Like…. Really. Generous. And the sample dots on cards were also extremely generous. If you decide to order any of those, you’ll be able to do quite a bit with them. In fact, I took some of my sample dots and pressed them into half pans as well. (bottom row, the three on the far left, as well as the one alone on the row) Pans are relatively inexpensive, around $6.50 each, so I ordered several this time around to make shipping seem less costly to me, per pan.

I don’t (yet!!) have other brands of handmade paints to compare with these, but I really like these.  Most are transparent, a few are quite opaque. I was afraid of opaque colors when I first began painting, but I’m starting to like them more now, and one of these, caput mortuum, I LOVE. (I’ve found recently I seem to like all types and brands of pr101, and pr102 apparently is similar in feel, with a more purple hue) I’ve just ordered a few more colors and there are two or three I’ll eventually add, so you can look forward to future swatchings!

I was surprised by how vibrant they are while sketching this azalea today. The palette looks so muted, but the colors are strong (with the exception of a trio that are very light) without much shift in color as they dry. The colors I used today:  Pollams Pink (pr122 and pg23), Bergblau (pb29: ultramarine), Mais (yellow: py150, py110), a touch of Ultramarine Green (pg24, gorgeous color!) in a couple of the shadows, a bit of Cyan (pb15:3) mixed with bergblau for the sky, Rehbraun (py43) and Caput Mortuum (pr102) for the branch and some of the shadows.

I have here THREE shades of py43, all different. Cool!

These colors are all so vibrant. I don’t have a traditional selection of colors, but I just love looking at the swatched colors! I do have a nice triad, with the Pollams Pink, Mais, and either cyan or ultramarine, so can mix any color I want.

One of the colors, Ludwig Green, even has gold mixed in (upper right corner of the swatch sheet)

The packaging is fun… four pans arrived nestled in a paper matchbox with the logo outside. And each pan had washi tape decorating the pan, and a brown parchment wrapping it. Then a dark paper sleeve with the paint name written on it. The dots are on heavy pieces of quality watercolor paper, also wrapped in brown parchment.  You could easily take a sample dot card out with your painting journal for urban sketching or plain air painting.

So, I’ve done nothing with these yet except swatching them, and painting this azalea sketch, but I look forward to doing more with them. And when the rest of my colors arrive, I’ll be moving these to a new tin, perfecting the order they’re in, and making a fresh swatch card. Woo-hoo!