Watercolor paints "Leningrad": the pros and cons

For many professional artists, watercolor today is not a serious artistic tool, but for someone in it all life. Although the recipe for water-based paints was not invented yesterday, it was not given to him for too long: there was no accumulated technology that would reveal the best features of this terrific sort of colors.

Today, it is used, if not all professionals, then at least by many lovers of a decent level. In some cases, the talent may remain undisclosed, if such a person someone who knows does not tell the sensible sort of watercolor.

Any accomplished artist in the post-Soviet space, even if he was never fond of watercolor, this name should be familiar, but for a person who is just discovering the magical world of watercolor painting, you should make a little excursion into history.

The paint and varnish factory on the place where the Neva palette is now located was founded more than a hundred years ago, before the revolution. However, it was not until 1934 that he had serious prospects when, by order of the then Soviet government, it was decided to turn the enterprise into one of the largest in the country. This is not to say that it was one of a kind, however it was Leningrad paints that most of all the others liked Soviet watercolorists.

There was practically no import from abroad at that time, and other factories of the Soviet Union could not offer products of equal quality.

Nowadays, watercolor lovers have a huge selection of relevant products from all the leading brands in the world, but most still claim that the Nevsky Palette watercolor remains at the level of the best world samples. The company is positioning itself as a manufacturer, whose fad is a professional art watercolor, and indicates that the brand is known far beyond the borders of Russia. Series such as “Sonnet”, “Ladoga” or “White Nights” (the Leningrad sets belong to the latter) are rightly considered the best of its kind.

Speaking about the assortment of “Leningrad”, one should not expect a big variety - it’s not a brand or even a series, but only one of the sets of the White Nights series. Traditionally, this set is available in two versions - from 16 and 24 colors, although the rules of the plant are to produce separate cuvettes with paints of one or another shade, which allows both replacing the used colors and adding new ones to the standard set by expanding their own palette.

Type of packaging may vary slightly. In Soviet times, artists appreciated not only the watercolor of this brand, but also the form in which it was produced: a plastic box, which at the same time represented a palette. Nowadays, most of the Leningrad kits are still produced in plastic packaging, but there are also variations in a metal or cardboard box, which in one direction or another affects the cost of the set.

Many reviews indicate that previously branded products of this brand still differed with higher quality, but still all involved noted that today this set can be safely called one of the best. Appreciate it for the following positive qualities.

• High quality pigments. The plant, producing "Leningrad", has its own workshop, producing pigments, so that the company has a huge number of hand-made shades. Most of them are single-pigmented, which guarantees the absence of dirt. It is obvious that these colors are perfectly mixed together. As a rule, dyes are made from natural raw materials, so the paints are light-resistant, only some shades fade, which the manufacturer carefully warns on the label of each individual cuvette.

• Gum arabic. For watercolor, the binder used is of great importance, and it is gum arabic that is considered the best vegetable glue. It provides the desired viscosity of the paint, while not interfering with the good dispersion of pigments over the surface of the paper. High transparency, allowing you to create real masterpieces using the glaze technique, is also achieved by adding gum arabic.

• Fillers. The plus of the “Leningrad” set is that the paints in it do not contain any additional substances at all, there is only what is really necessary for drawing!

If the advantages of using such a set are on the surface, then the minuses are much harder to find. In many ways, the criticism of "Leningrad" is subjective, but it is impossible to take seriously the argument "earlier it was better." In addition, nostalgic remarks often mention the convenience of the box in which such watercolor was previously produced, but the features of the packaging still have nothing to do with the paint itself.

Sometimes you can find criticism and the fact that some of the shades offered by the manufacturer burn out pretty quickly, but Petrograd people at least write about it on the cuvettes, while the competitors can only guess what their work will look like years later. The high cost, which now fluctuates around a thousand rubles per set, is periodically criticized, however, this is a normal price for such quality.

About 10 errors when using watercolors, see the following video.