The Bottom Line
Pros
- Enables you to try all sorts of colors without the expense of buying a tube of each.
- Small dried samples of actual paint, not printed colors, which you wet with a brush to use.
Cons
- It can be hard to choose favorites, and may still tempt you to buy more colors than you truly need.
Description
- Color chart with actual dried watercolor samples. Each color has detailed info: name, series, lightfastness, opacity.
- Dot Try-It cards available with 66 colors or 238 colors.
- Paint samples are on watercolor paper, so you can use it to paint up a tonal color chart.
Guide Review - Daniel Smith Watercolor Dot Try It Cards
How many times haven't you succumbed to the temptation to buy another tube of watercolor because the color was so appealing? Just to try it, because you never know... While Daniel Smith's Dot Try-It Cards don't remove the temptation, but do make it more affordable to try out new colors.
The 238 Try-It Chart contains colors from across all the watercolors Daniel Smith produces, including 31 PrimaTeks, 5 Mayan, 12 quinacridones, 6 cadmium hues, 48 Luminescent, 20 iridescent, 7 interference, and 19 Duochrome colors. The other 140 are from the Daniel Smith Extra Fine Watercolors selection.
The cards, which are on watercolor paper, contain a small dot of dried watercolor paint for each color. To try a color, you simply wet it with a brush as you would pan watercolor or dried watercolor paint on your palette. The samples may seem small -- not even the size of the nail on your pinkie finger -- but it's plenty to get a feel for a color in a range of tones.
As the paint samples are on watercolor paper, you can turn them into a painted color chart. Or give yourself more room to try a color by cutting up the chart and sticking each color into a painting sketchbook. Be sure to keep the info that's printed below each color with the paint sample though, as it's all too easy to loose track of which color was which!
