Japanese Seasons Watercolour Set, Spring
£65.00
One of the possible byproducts of the situation we find ourselves in is a renewed heightened awareness of nature. The song of birds, the silence of the sky, the passing of the seasons have filled the emptiness of time with a welcome rekindling of earth's motherhood and all the meaning that entails, thanks Nature! With that in mind we have devised 4 palettes depicting each season, having picked out (in a way by no means prescriptive or exhaustive) some colours of leaves, trees, flowers, and feelings propriertary to winter, spring, summer and winter. There is no overlap in terms of colours between the 4 season sets, each set includes 20 distinct colours.
Also consider Swiss painter Johannes Itten's (1888 – 1967) seasonal colour theory - four colour palettes for four types of people each under the sun of a different season - a sort of painter's Yin and Yang if you will.
Of course there is no strict prescription for the use of this set, only a desire to give inspiration - the colours can be used in a literal way for landscape and botanicals, or more abstractly and expressively. They can also be mixed resulting in an even wider range of colours.
Each season comes in a matching box covered in luxury silk screen printed Japanese paper. Each box is made from a different segment of the print and so the pattern may vary.
Very useful too, a letterpress swatch card featuring each individual colour name is included to be painted in for colour referencing. This can come in handy as appearances can be deceiving and each colour is only revealed once wet and set to paper!
We recommend our Aquarella (white) and Aquarello (off-white) for the perfect paper pairing.
Details
Material: Gansai watercolour
Included: 20 colours in chiyogami paper presentation box and including a blank letterpress swatch card which can be painted in for colour reference.
Vegetarian/ Vegan: No (contains gelatine glue binder)
Non-toxic
Made in Japan
Colours Included:
18 - Murasaki - Purple
56 - Rai-Gunsho - Indigo ultramarine
127 - Aokusa - Grass green
49 - Shiro-Midori - White green
155 - Joushu - Upper vermillion
211 - Aketsuchi - Earthy crimson
41 - Botan - Peony
40 - Natane-iro - Rapeseed
57 - Kouhaku - Yellow-white
73 - Rumi Opera - Luminous opera pink
206 - Midori - Green
47 - Hatoba - Usually translated to mean blue-black in the context of colour, but literally translating to ‘pigeon wing’, this bold pink references the lighter parts of pigeon feathers.
202 - Nadeshiko-iro - This pink is named after the family of flowers we call ‘pinks’ rather than the colour itself: Dianthus.
65 - Paaru Aka - Pearlescent red
201 - Akebono-iro - This light pink literally translates to ‘daybreak colour’: Picture the lightest and subtlest shades in the clouds at dawn.
10 - Taisha - Taishan Red; this could also be translated as ‘old Chinese mountain red’
20 - Wakaba - Fresh leaves
214 - Hiwa-iro - From the Japanese mahiwa which is the name for the eurasian siskin - a small bird in the finch family which has striking yellow-green feathers.
67 - Paaru Kimodori - Pearlescent pea green
1 - Enji - Shortened from enjimushi which is the Japanese name for the insect from which the deep red dye carmine is derived. A synthetic alternative is used today.
