Kuretake Gansai Tambi Watercolour Set - Sumi Colours

Traditional Japanese solid watercolours for professional artists and crafters.

This set includes 6 greyish colours with hints of hues in darkness. You can express unique shades of Sumi by adding more water to produce granulation, or less water to produce a glossy and rich finish.

Gansai paints are a specific kind of Japanese watercolour with a slightly different binder than western paints. It's this binder that allows the paints to be applied more thickly like a gouache, and makes them dry with a slight sheen if they are applied thickly. It is a solid transparent watercolour that does not lose its vividness even when mixing colours due to the uniformity of pigment particles. When the pigment particles are uniform, the light is reflected constantly, so even if they are mixed, vivid colour development is possible.

Kuretake's Transparent Watercolour is a high quality paint that delivers brilliant colour. The finely ground pigment particles allow for blending, layering, and adding a colour gradation. These watercolours are built to last due to the paint's highly lightfast qualities and non-toxic pigments.

Handcrafted by traditional methods and free from odours, the solid water-based pigments in this set are more opaque than other brands and offer a smooth, creamy consistency when mixed together. Gansai paints are very pigmented and are thicker and creamier than Western watercolours. They tend to be less transparent than Western or European watercolours but can be thinned with water to create more transparent washes. 

*Gansai pan may show cracking due to a dry environment, occasionally the Gansai pan may look rough due to tiny air bubbles. None of these affects the quality or method of use.

Features:

• 6 x Individual Pans: (231) Sumi Red, (241) Sumi Yellow, (251) Sumi Green, (262) Sumi Blue, (263) Sumi Violet (271) Sumi Brown

• Water based pigment

• This paint set is ideal for drawing, calligraphy, lettering, illustrations, fine art, and much more.

• High opaque ink

• Non toxic

• Lightfast

• Xylene free

• Made in Japan

About the brand

Kuretake was founded in Nara Japan in 1902 as an ink manufacturer, and in 2022 they celebrated their 120th anniversary. Even now, at their headquarters in Nara, they carry out all sequences of product creation from product planning and design, manufacturing, and quality control testing.