Trying out the Yasutomo Authentic Chinese Paints! (Ft. LadyAnnaVintage)

It’s been over 6 months now since I begun doing artwork and almost 4 since I began doing watercolor, crazy huh? I swear it was only yesterday but here we are. I definitely feel as if I’ve benefited from becoming a beginner artist and I’ve been really enjoying it. I’m not great as of right now but I’m practicing hard and I’m eager to keep going and expand my range of art mediums. In that quest I have been trying out different art mediums but also different products within a medium such as Watercolor which has been my main medium for a while now. Primarily I use Sakura Koi watercolor (I started off with Crayola but let’s not pay much heed to that.) and Daler Rowney Watercolor which are beginner student grade paints but thanks to Mum, my Sister and a sudden gracious gift from the people at Schmincke (Which you can read about in this blog: https://zakentertainment.blogspot.com/2017/07/schmincke-hordam-aquarell-samples.html) I’ve been able to experience new brands and share my experiences with you guys here on the blog.

Well today I’m bringing you guys a new experience that not just me but my sister underwent. For the longest time I've been an avid lover of asian paintings whether it be Chinese Ink and Wash or Japanese Sumi and awesome enough Mum had purchased these a few weeks ago but she was gracious enough to let both me and Annie try these Authentic Chinese Paints out in the first of hopefully many ZAK Entertainment and LadyAnnaVintage collaborations! See my sister if you’re not aware runs her own blog by the name of LadyAnnaVintage where she posts illustrations and photography as well as sharing her experiences regarding those pieces of art and reviews of the products she uses and boy is she ever good. Annie has been an artist practically her whole life so a lot of my inspiration comes from her. (As well as a lot of tips and tricks.) It feels great to finally collaborate with my sister on this brand new video where we dive in and try out these Yasutomo Authentic Chinese Watercolor Paints.

As a premise to this video Chinese Watercolors are not the same as western watercolors such as Winsor & Newton Cotman which is what Annie uses. (My Sakura Koi aren't western actually, they're Japanese.) The techniques used with these paints as well as the brushes are widely different and artists who uses these paints usually use calligraphy techniques. These paints are also mostly used on Silk or Xuan Paper which is known as rice paper over here. I’m afraid I wasn’t able to demonstrate that but this is our first time using these paints so enjoy the video below! (Grab some Popcorn, which I conveniently have as of the writing of this blog.)

Really need to work on the whole duo set up for future collabs but we enjoyed making this video regardless and hope you enjoyed too! Anyway as I said in the video Yasutomo and Company was established in Japan in the year 1954 by Mr. Ben Yasutomo. In an attempt to market products from Asia in America Mr. Yasutomo set up office in San Francisco in a strategic location to develop commerce between America and Japan. At first the company simply imported gift and paper products but soon in the 1960s introduced Asian Art supplies.

This set of 12 Authentic Chinese Paints includes Chinese White, Gamboge Yellow, Vermillion, Cinnabar, Rouge, Scarlet, Burnt Sienna, Carmine Red, Light Green, Light Blue, Phthalo Blue and Indigo so you get all the colors traditionally used in traditional Chinese and Japanese paintings. Now a lot of old famous Chinese paintings were done with black ink for Ink and Wash paintings but you’ll find just as many are done with Watercolors on silk. These watercolors are still watercolor, you wet your brush, wet your paper then apply pigment but they do have they differences. For one I find the colors to be vastly vibrant and the way they dry seem to be more feathered then other watercolors. Besides Traditional paintings methods which is basically calligraphy you can use this watercolors for other styles of paintings as well, you don’t have to paint using traditional methods which I sadly failed to do. Yeah I’m really going to have to practice in order to get anywhere near good enough to do traditional Chinese paintings. Most paintings usually only use 1 or 2 colors on a single art piece besides the black ink so instead of using a wide amount of colors painters would utilize the paints in a way that showed depth with only using a few colors.

The color swatch I was working on in the video.

The colors are pretty nice and I would seriously compare these too artist grade paints such as the Schmincke Horadam Aquarell paints I tried out last month. Why? Because of how much pigment you DON’T need to pick up with your brush. These pigments last and have such vibrancy to them. Some of these are opaque and transparent.

Warning you all now while you can use this for other styles of watercolor you might not want mix these with your other brands of watercolor. I don’t have any photo proof but off camera when Annie first attempted using these before we recorded the video she had attempted to mix the Chinese paints with her Winsor & Newton Cotman paints which then mixed to what she described as a “Muddy Grey Color”. So yeah these are probably not good for mixing but you can experiment if you wish.

Also if you watched this video I don’t blame you if you did a good facepalm during a few parts of this video. I guess I’ve proven how much of a novice I am by not actually molding the watercolor tube in my hand before squeezing it onto the pallet, thus the yellow paint came out separated. I thought this was something wrong with the paints and boy was I right. Never use these paints until you mold them in your hand to make sure the liquid is mixed with the pigment. I’m actually quite worried that the yellow paint might now be unusable due to this naïve move on my part. So yeah don’t be like me and mold that paint.

Overall these are nice paints and the colors are vastly vibrant. If you saw the video and her finished swatch pictured above you’ll see Annie did do a couple of color mixes to make some purple triangles in her color swatch so they’re good for mixing as well.

I have to say one thing about these paints though, certain parts of my color swatch have seemingly gone a little, sticky? Yeah I'm not sure what's up with that, perhaps I didn't add enough water to certain parts or perhaps it's the humidity that plagues where I live on a constant basis but regardless I'm not sure if the paints are supposed to do that. Might want to keep in mind when storing the paintings you use on this, make sure where you store it isn't too humid. This is probably a good tip for storing any art of any form to be honest, especially oil paintings.

I didn’t get to try these paints using the traditional brushes that belong to my Mum but I don’t actually know how to paint using traditional Calligraphy methods so it wouldn’t of been right for me to use them, which is why I’m going to start practicing on those kinds of techniques. One day I'll be able to paint those wonderful Sumi paintings and Asian paintings I've come to love all my life, maybe.

Anyway if you like what you see and want to get these paints for yourself you can do so via Amazon who has this 12 set of paints for $7.93 USD. (On the video I actually said $7.54 which they were at the time but they apparently raised the price.)

You can’t paint these watercolors without the brushes to go with them. Well I did but regardless you’ll want to get some of these BQLZR Excellent Wolf Hair Chinese Calligraphy Sumi and Kanji Brushes.

These are the three brushes I had sitting on the table in the video. These are great for calligraphy writing but also painting with these Chinese paints and are made from Wolf Hair with wood shafts making them great for beginners. These are definitely built for Chinese Calligraphy and have the perfect length for just that. These brushes are $5.95 on Amazon so be sure to check them out.

Also I found some Xuan paper on here which is the paper you would want for doing calligraphy and Chinese painting on. This roll is 14 x 10 inch and should work like traditional Xuan paper but I’ve not actually tried it out myself. You can buy this roll at Amazon for $5.99.

For more of Annie’s artwork please be sure to check out her blog ladyannavintage.blogspot.com and her DeviantArt annavintage.deviantart.com! Also be sure to check out both of us on Redbubble for awesome apparel and other merchandise featuring our artwork as well as ZAK Entertainment merchandise for the 1 year anniversary. redbubble.com/people/ladyannavintage is where you can find Annie's work and redbubble.com/people/zakentertains is where you can find mine. If you loved the video please be sure to support me on Patreon so I can get better video equipment and a new computer to bring you guys higher quality content! patreon.com/zakentertainment.

Check out Yasutomo's full catalog here: http://www.yasutomo.com/

So with that all said and done I have a free knitting pattern to feature, one I thought fit perfectly in with the Chinese theme. With winter coming up soon you’ve probably already begun your winter knits and now you can add a new one to your queue with this “Pandamonium” beanie pattern by Karin Michele of iknit2purl2.com!

Pandas! You just got to love the big black and white lovable bamboo eaters and now you can wear this really awesome pattern on your head this coming winter season. It’s knitted bottom up and is of course a colorworks hat but shouldn’t be too hard if you can follow charts. The yarn used on this pattern is Worsted Weight 100% Wool Cascade 220 Superwash yarn and you’re going to need 1 skein of these following colors: Gray (816), White (871), Black (815) and Caribbean (847). As far as needles you’ll need US Size 6 (4 mm) circular needles with a sixteen inch cord for the beginning rib, the same length cord on a US Size 7 ( 4.5 MM) for the body and US Size 7 (4.5 MM) Double Pointed Needles for finishing the hat off. You’ll also need stitch markers, scissors, a tapestry or dawning needle and a pom-pom maker. (Actually you can make pom-poms completely from scratch if you got some cardboard that you can cut into a circular say from a box or something.)

This actually should be a good pattern that isn’t too complicated but still giving you that fun and challenging knit that colorworks does. The chart is easy to follow especially thanks to Karin’s great instructions so you should have no problem knitting this up! It’s a great hat that’ll look awesome during the winter and for some reason I want to wear this while painting using Chinese paints, haha.

Anyway you can check this pattern out here: and don’t forget to check Karin out at iknit2purl2.com!

That’s it for today everyone! I finally finished watching Marvel’s Defenders so who knows that might have something to do with Wednesday’s blog. Until then however…

This was ZAK Entertainment

See you on Wednesday!