Product Review - Greenleaf and Blueberry Paints

This year for Christmas, my husband bought me some lovely handmade watercolor paints!  I was so excited by this, because I really wanted to try handmade paints but they are a bit pricey.  It was a wonderful gift idea and I was so excited!  He purchased me 4 starter half-pans from Greenleaf and Blueberry, a small US company specializing in art supplies for the traveling artist.  I was SO excited to get these paints!  

He started me out with a very earthy set of colors, and I was very glad for that because I love landscapes!  The four colors I'm reviewing are: 

• Red Ochre
• Green Earth
• Pthalocyanine Green
• Vivanite

Per the website, here's what the seller has to say about each of their paints: 

The Paint:

-Artist Grade

-Single Pigment

-Lightfast

-No Fillers, brighteners, or dispersants

-Pure, Genuine, Natural Pigments

-Made Traditionally By Hand With Muller & Slab

-Artist & Chemist Formulated

I have done several projects with these paints, both on their own and in conjunction with other watercolors to see how they would do in several arenas.  Here are some things I thought were notable: 

• Red Ochre and Pthalo Green were beautifully pigmented.  I actually gasped when I swatched them I was so happy.  They also mix beautifully with other artist grade paints.  The Red Ochre is a bit more opaque than the Pthalo Green, which is exactly as it should be.  I was very impressed with these paints in the upfront tests.  
• Green Earth is a beautiful color but it is a weaker shade.  It takes a lot of work to get a big pigment payout, and it is weaker in mixes than the first two.  I still really like this color, but I have come to use it as a stand-alone and not as a mixable color.  
• Vivanite.  Holy cow guys.  This color is probably one of the coolest paints I've ever owned!  It's very pigmented but the GRANULATION is out of control amazing!  It is similar in color to Payne's Gray, but it adds so much richness and complexity to a piece because of the granulation!  It works beautifully as a background or in landscape painting.  I'm just in love with it!  

Here are some paintings I've done with these paints (some standalone, some mixed), and my thoughts on each:  

This was my first painting done with these paints.  I really enjoyed how beautifully they worked to make an easy landscape painting.  The Vivanite as a background is just so lovely here, and you can really see how beautifully contrasting the two green shades are.  

This was a fun sketchbook "rocks" activity I did, mainly to see pigmentation, granulation, etc.  I had to work much harder to get the Green Earth to stand up in this piece to the other colors, but it does stand up to them with a little extra work!  Once again, you see how BEAUTIFUL the granulation is on the Vivanite here.  The gray is really what makes this piece look like rocks instead of blobs in my opinion!  I love that paint!  

Here I used the paints to do a little teacup.  I don't love this piece but I do love how these paints laid down as full background washes!  The Vivanite mixed very well into the other paints here to create shadows on objects, which was really great too.  

This little painting was done with some G&B paints and other handmade watercolors mixed together.  I mixed the Vivanite with Ultramarine Blue in order to get the background gradient, and I mixed the Pthalo Green with the same Ultramarine Blue to get the water.  The sand is the Red Ochre, mixed with a smidge of Lemon Yellow.  These paints mixed beautifully and created a really lovely little beach scene here.  

Finally, I used all four paints, along with several other colors, to create this Spring wreath.  Here you can see that the paints do a nice job of layering and glazing, something I hadn't really done with them in the other paintings.  

These paints have been a fabulous foundation to my handmade watercolor collection.  Would I buy more of them?  Absolutely!  I am definitely going to look into more of their granulating colors, and I would love to have a few more of their earth tones to enrich my palette further.  If you are in the market for handmade watercolors, I would *highly* recommend Greenleaf and Blueberry!  

Have you tried handmade watercolors before?  What do you think of these paints?  Let me know in the comments below!