Hello hello! Before last December I bought an advent calendar by Khanna’s Honey Hues to open each day and swatch the color and do a portrait study. So, 24 days in the watercolor advent calendar (obviously), thus 24 different color pans, which then resulted in 24 different monochrome portraits made using each color per day. In the first six portraits or so I also used colored pencils but the remaining paintings were created only using the new watercolors. (if you do not want to get spoiled, do not read any further)

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First of all, I hope you had a great Holiday and start to this new year 🙂 As you see I had a watercolor Holiday with the new colors, doing portrait studies (and learning some video editing).

I am not going too much into the actual colors now, I will probably cover them better once I’ve used them more. But I can say that they were very nice pigments overall 🙂 so originally I googled for an art advent calendar early before the holidays and I wanted to get a watercolor calendar with some great pigments, instead of some random art stuff that I do not need nor likely use (though I can always hoard more watercolors… ;D).

I did some googling, searched some art online stores, and Etsy and finally, I found a promising set by Khanna’s Honey Hues (via Etsy, but there is also their own website and shop: https://khannahshoneyhues.com/ ). There were other options also, that I found while searching, some with random art items or other color pan sets, but this seemed like a nice package.

The colors were in a tin box and individually packed with numbering for each day. There was a nice leaflet with info on the colors and a watercolor paper calendar to swatch the colors. I also painted monochrome watercolor portrait studies for each day. (which also happened to be a suggestion in the leaflet, to do some monochrome paintings). All the colors in the set:

• Day 1: Praesodinium PY159
• Day 2: Hansa yellow Medium PY65
• Day 3: Tangerine PO62
• Day 4: Other Orange PO61
• Day 5: Zephyranthes PY159/108
• Day 6: Zauschneria PR254/PR122
• Day 7: Rubia PR209/PB28
• Day 8: Xerochrysum PR259/PV19
• Day 9: Cinnabar PR265/PV16
• Day 10: Manganese Violet Deep PV16
• Day 11: Deep Space. Mica
• Day 12: Baltic. Mica
• Day 13: Phthalo Blue (RS) PB15:6
• Day 14: Wedgewood PB29/PY43
• Day 15: Celeste PB15/PG18
• Day 16: Phthalo Aqua PBN/A
• Day 17: Phthalo Green (YS) PG36
• Day 18: Honeydew PB15/PY159
• Day 19: Zokine PR101/PG8
• Day 20: Kursk Haematite PR101
• Day 21: Scottish Red Granite PR101
• Day 22: Raw Umber PBr7
• Day 23: Scarab. Mica
• Day 24: Woodburn PR255/PG7

All the colors were very nice, not too many mica colors (three) that I rarely use (mostly just for some detailing if at all). The set also had all the basic mixing colors (Yellow: Hansa Yellow Medium, Red: Zauschneria, Blue: Phthalo Blue), some other mixers, and lots of more or less granulating colors (I counted eight). So basically I have an entirely new palette and I’ve always wanted to get some honey-based colors 🙂

Aaand.. I also made youtube videos revealing the colors, first swatching and then showcasing the portraits I did while using the colors. I made each video with 8 color batches (three videos). See which colors were my favorites 🙂 You can see the videos here:

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Also here you can see all the portrait studies I made in day order as pictures here:

References were via museum app, you can check my account: shoila for all tagged original inspiration photos.

(I am not sponsored, I bought the colors on my own and just wanted to tell you about them, I did quite extensive googling to find a nice calendar so I figured I’d share info on it)