Prang Glitter Watercolor Paint: My Review

Hello again! I am continuing on my journey through my watercolor paints so that I can organize them and actually use them.  I came across my favorite watercolors and I am very excited to share with you the glitter!  I’m going to say it…but I love glitter and anything sparkly.  I swear I was a magpie in a previous life.

I introduce to you Prang Glitter Watercolor.  Remember the plastic box filled with the little oval pans filled with primary and secondary colors that you used in elementary school?  Well, this is that…glitterfied.  And yes…at 32, I still use this one.  Reason why?  Because, well, glitter.  I purchased this particular set when I started graduate school in 2009 because it was $2 on the Target clearance rack. I don’t use them often because in graduate school, it was frowned upon to use glitter on our costume design renderings.  I used them for fun; one project I used them for was creating watercolor blank cards for thank you notes.

But as I started a new test page, I forgot how much joy these watercolors gave me.  The joy came from little things while using the paints.  I loved how the paint looks in the small oval pans when water has saturated and thicken the watercolor paint.  

And I loved how the paint dried; surprisingly there is an abundance of fine glitter (when you start painting correctly…more on that later…) and the colors are bright with a nice shiny sheen to the paint when dried.  The glitter doesn’t even come off when brushed when dry like some cheaper paints with glitter.

The Prang paints come in eight oval pans.  They come in a rectangle white box with no outer advertisement printed on the plastic.  I remembered when I bought this (and confirmed on the Internet on Amazon) the only printed information came on a cardboard wrap.  So, if you don’t keep this then you don’t have the company information listed.  I’m not sure of this is a good thing or bad; I didn’t know what company the paint came from until I opened the paints to see the word, “PRANG” in large spread out letters on the plastic surrounding the paints.  But, when using these particular paints, any other information about the paints weren’t necessary because the plastic box reminded me of what type of paints these were.  Which is good for the company because the brand becomes recognizable through the product itself (if you are familiar with the different types and quality of watercolor out there.) A small brush is included.  It’s ok to use the brush that comes with the pan but I prefer to use a more professional grade brush because of the bristles; less quality bristles tend to splay out from the base of the wood.

The eight colors that are included in this watercolor are Gold, Silver, Purple, Blue (my favorite shade, too!!!), Green, Yellow, Orange, and Red.  The fine glitter in each pan match the color in the pan with a little bit of iridescent glitter mixed in.

The key in being successful to using this paint is to add water to the pans and let the water saturate the pan and penetrate the paint for a few minutes before using the paint.  I suggest covering your brush (in less technical terms, just glop it on.) Unless you need a darker shade, one layer of this paint is bright enough to be efficient.  Another thing that I liked about using this paint is that it is easy to mix other colors together and shade well without the pigment separating, which sometimes happen with less expensive paint.

Overall, I recommend this paint for beginner and intermediate artists. (More experienced artists may want to use this paint too for its glitter effects, but I know there are other paints and mediums, like the iridescent mediums you can purchase to add sheen to any watercolor paint.) I recommend it because of it being easy to use and because it produces a nice smooth finish when dried.

And it’s glitter…and the paint water looks really cool after you aredone cleaning your brushes…GLITTER WATER… ‘Nuff said.

Please check out Prang’s Website for other products available. (www.prang.com)

Although I purchase mine at Target, you can purchase them at  Amazon.

Disclaimer:  I have not received any compensation from Prang to recommend this paint to anyone.  I just really like it…and GLITTER.