Winsor & Newton change watercolour paint tubes - again!

A lot of artists will be very pleased that Winsor & Newton have listened to all the complaints about the design of the new tubes for professional water colour paints - and have changed them - again!

There's nothing on the website as yet - and I can't find a press release but the announcement is on the W&N Facebook Page (on 16th September) about their plans to change the tubes.

No announcement as yet as to when you will find them at your preferred supplier.

Below you can see the old 'new' tube on the left and the revised 'new' tube on the right.

Winsor & Newton Professional Water Colour - another change of tube

(image from W&N on Facebook www.facebook.com/WinsorNewton)

The main changes are:

• Name of the colour: this is now much more obvious and much easier to read at the cap end due to the improvement in contrast between the text and the background. It's still in three languages as before - 
• Actual Colour Swatch: much larger and goes from being a small brush stroke to being a much obvious block of colour at the cap end
• W & N name and logo: moves down the tube so that all the core information is at the top. Slight redesign of text and more prominence for the griffin logo.

I think the changes made were much needed and a major improvement which I'm sure will be welcomed by very many artists who use W&N watercolours.

They may also get back those artists who decided to stop using W&N paints after they found they couldn't tell which tube they were picking up.

 With any luck W&N will eventually realise that:

• quite a lot of artists would rather like to have the white matte background back as well. I've yet to find an artist who actually likes the shiny metal tube. Shiny when it comes to reading is 'bad news'.  As soon as the new tubes came out, one professional artist I know made a point of showing me how impossible it was to read any text on the tube under a bright light.
• addressing the change in quality concerns are ALSO important. 

When I interview botanical artists who paint in watercolour at the RHS Botanical Art Show II always make a point of asking them which paint their prefer. It was the case for while that almost all used to say Winsor & Newton. However in the last 2-3 years, as they have replaced their 'old' tubes of Winsor and Newton Water Colour Paints with the new paints, I'm now hearing that people experienced disatisfaction with the quality of paint performance and are now also trying other brands to get the quality they require.

Winsor & Newton and the Manufacture of Water Colour Paints

The Winsor & Newton Paint Factory in Whitefriars Avenue, Harrow - which opened in 1937 and used to make all the watercolour paints - closed in 2011 after ColArt (who own W&N as well as a number of other famous brands) moved paint production to the Lefranc & Bourgeois factory in France.

(Do NOT be misled by this video of the old Wealdstone factory uploaded to YouTube in 2012 AFTER the factory closed)

Changes in paint were noticed by both retailers and artists after this. 

It's not entirely clear where watercolour paint is now made - the website is very curiously silent on the matter. However the ColArt website indicates that the company has two art material plants in China.

It's all very curious in an age when most of W&N's main competitors in quality watercolour production now make a virtue of how and where they manufacture. (e.g. Daniel Smith; M. Graham)

I don't think people mind the location of manufacturing changing.
What they do mind is when the quality of the manufacture changes.

The Top Five Artists' Watercolour Paints in 2013

Personal preferences were expressed in the product review poll "Which are the best artist-quality watercolour paints? (2012 / 13)" on my website Which is the best brand of watercolour paint for artists?

The chart below records the results of 360 responses.

Derived from
Which are the best artist-quality
watercolour paints? (2012 / 13)

The TOP FIVE WATERCOLOUR PAINTS IN 2013 are:

1. Winsor & Newton - 27%
2. M. Graham Watercolour Paints - 11%
3. Daniel Smith Watercolor Paints - 10%
4. Fine Schminke Horadam Aquarell - 9%
5. Sennelier Aquarelle Extra - 8%

It's basically Winsor & Newton way out in front and then four brands - two American and two European - bringing in the next significant group of artist grade paints.

Those who are unfamiliar with M. Graham Watercolor Paints may be surprised they came second. However you should note:

• Reviews of these paints generally provide high praise for the quality, saturation and lightfastness
• 95% of those buying this paint from Dick Blicks would recommend them to a friend.
• The Wilcox Guide to the Finest Watercolours gave high ratings to these paints across the watercolour range.

Below that most paints got little or no support of significance - although there is a good spread of those that did get votes

The chart below reflects the paints in the poll in alphabetical order - and indicates the percentage of the vote each attracted.

The ranking of different brands of paint - in percentage order - follows the chart

Ranking of Watercolour Paints

This is the final ranking for the 2012-13 Poll to identify

• 27% - Winsor and Newton Artists Watercolours 
• 11% - M. Graham Watercolor Paints
• 10% - Daniel Smith Watercolor Paints 
• 9% - Fine Schminke Horadam Aquarell
• 8% - Sennelier Aquarelle Extra
• 6% - Holbein Artists Watercolor
• 3% - Royal Talens
• Rembrandt
• St. Petersburg Watercolors
• 2%
• Daler Rowney Artists Watercolours 
• Kremer Pigmente Watercolors
• 1% 
• Da Vinci
• Dr. Ph. Martin's Hydrus Fine Art Watercolor Paints
• Grumbacher Watercolor - Finest
• Lukas Aquarell
• Maimeri Blu
• Mijello Mission Gold Watercolors
• Royal Talens - Van Gogh
• Shin Han Premium Watercolors

The following paints failed to get a vote:

• Art Spectrum Artists Watercolours
• Blockx Extra Fine Watercolors
• Holbein Irodori Antique Watercolor
• Old Holland Classic Watercolours
• Pebeo Fragonard Extra-Fine Artists' Watercolors
• Robert Doak's Concentrated Watercolors
• Stephen Quiller Watercolors
• Utrecht Artists' Watercolors

I'll be posting a new Poll for 2014 in the next few days.

The NEW 2011 Pastels Opinion Polls

This is an invitation to pastel artists to vote for their favourite brand of pastels in 2011.   

You can find two BRAND NEW 2011 Opinion Polls about artists' grade pastels for 2011 on Pastels - Resources for Artists.

• Artists have already started to vote - see 2011 Poll: Which is your favourite make of soft pastels? This poll focuses on artist grade soft pastels which are available at the beginning of January 2011.   This is the second of my annual polls and the third poll I've run which has sked this question.  See the end for links to previous polls.
• My resources for pastel artists site also has a second poll on hard pastels further down - see 2011 POLL: Which is your favourite make of hard pastel?  This includes some additional brands compared to the poll I ran last year.

Pastels in the Sennelier Shop
(across the Seine from the Louvre) in Paris

The purpose of having an Annual Opinion Poll is to identify which are the most popular pastels in 2011.  This nables:

• new brands to be reflected in the poll
• people who have experimented with more brands and new brands since voting to change their preference if they want to

All past votes which applied to choices available in the past no longer apply. You can now vote again.  Don't forget to check all the options before you vote. The pastels are listed in alphabetical order.

The Annual Poll can also provide feedback to the manufacturers about preferences which will hopefully provide an some incentive to continue with a good selection in the marketplace and products which continue to improve in both quality and lightfastness over time.

If any of the marketing people from the different pastel manufacturers are reading this and note that their new brands in the pipeline are NOT included please contact me with the date your product is due to be in the marketplace AND on your website.

Previous posts:

• Which is your favourite make of soft pastels? (2010 Poll Results)
• The NEW 2010 Soft Pastels Opinion Poll
• Opinion Poll: Which is your favourite make of soft pastels? This analysed my poll on my website Pastels - Resources for Artists. This ran from 2006 through to the end of 2009 and excluded newer pastels

Product Feedback: Winsor & Newton sketchbooks

If you're ever dissatisfied with a sketchbook it's always worthwhile letting the manufacturer know exactly what you think, especially if you are a watercolourist. A lot of people who sketch don't only use light watercolour washes. A number want to produce proper watercolours and will always need a paper that will cope with this.

Check out out what happened to Sue Smith (Sue's Sketch Blog) - see Sketchbooks - when she tried to buy a Winsor & Newton sketchbook which had paper heavy enough for proper watercolour washes and what happened next.

• Sue was after more supplies of her favourite Winsor & Newton White Paper Hard Back Sketch Books - 170gsm with a blue cover
  
• she could only find a White Paper Hard Back Sketch Books –110gsm (with a black cover) in her local art shop. The product guidelines indicate that this is suitable for use with pencil, pen and ink and light water colour washes - so this is, of course, not suitable for somebody who wants to do proper watercolours
  
• Her local art shop advised her that the sketchbooks with the heavier weight paper were still made (now with a black cover) but need to be ordered - so that's what Sue did
• When the new sketchbooks arrived she found that the paper was completely different
  

I collected my new books expecting them to be the same quality as the blue covered ones I have used for years, so was sadly disappointed to find that they were not. The paper did not respond well to wet in wet watercolour or heavy washes, the surface breaking up and going fluffy.
Sue Smith - Sketchbooks

• I checked the website description of the product she had been been supplied with and it states that These heavy weight paper sketch books are suitable for pencil, pen and ink and light water colour washes. Basically exactly the same as the 110gsm sketchbook!
  
• Sue wrote to Winsor & Newton asking whether they had changed their paper. It turns out they had - and you can read their reply in Sue's blog post Sketchbooks.
• Winsor & Newton also sent her one of their Luxury Artists’ Water Colour Sketch Book as a gesture of goodwill (see right to see what this looks like)
  

Paper changes

Winsor & Newton, like a number of other art material manufacturers are faced all the time with changes in their supplies of paper.

Sadly, that's just a fact of life. Paper mills have been going out of business for a long time now. Life becomes very difficult for art materials manufacturers because their view is that the art paper market is extremely price sensitive. Obviously they only want to design products they feel confident they can sell.

It makes for some very difficult decision-making - and it's an area where manufacturers could do with more input from their customers!

It's very important therefore that artists let manufacturers know when they really like their products and also when they don't. Are you really price sensitive - or do you just want a good quality product that does the job?

A Luxury Sketchbook and woodfree paper

This Luxury watercolour sketchbook is described as having woodfree paper.

The Woodfree fibres used in manufacture ensure the paper is 100% acid free, increasing the longevity of your paintings.

This means it's actually NOT the same as the best watercolour paper. It struck me as very odd that a sketchbook which is described as luxury should not use the best watercolour paper.

For the record the best watercolour paper is made from 100% cotton fibre (eg Arches Watercolour paper) or a mixture of cotton and linen (eg the Royal Watercolour Society Watercolour paper)

How to find and buy a Winsor & Newton Luxury Artist's Watercolour Sketchbook

I've never ever seen these luxury sketchbooks in any of the art shops that I frequent in London. (If you want the best try looking at Cornelissen's supply of watercolour sketchbooks and sketchpads)

So I decided to try and find out where it was possible to buy them and I did a search on the Internet. Some of the biggest online art materials suppliers do not stock them - according to the description used on the Winsor & Newton website. I could only find three small less well known stockists - and one of them was out of stock. However if you try different product descriptions - which I discovered only after 15 minutes of trying different combinations(!) - you can also find them at Heaton Cooper, Ken Bromley and Discount Art - none of which popped up in response to using the W&N description as the search term.

Curiously, these sketchbooks are not even available through Winsor & Newton's own online shop. Which considering it's obviously a very specialist product seems most unusual!

Feedback

Winsor & newton get a thumbs up from me for providing a feedback form on their website. It makes providing feedback very easy.

Conclusions

Quality: I find it really surprising that an art materials manufacturer which is so well known for its artist quality watercolours shouldn't make more of an effort to make sure that a sketchbook described as luxury actually used the best watercolour paper.

Customer satisfaction: Three cheers for Winsor & Newton for providing

• an appropriate response to Sue's experience. She gets to try a suitable sketchbook for free and to make up her own mind what she thinks about the paper and its relative value for money (ie it only contains 15 sheets)
• a way of providing feedback, comments and asking questions on their website.
  

Customer dissatisfaction: Winsor & Newton get a big thumbs down from me in relation to

• the quality of paper used in the 170 gsm sketchbook,
  
• the briefing provided to their suppliers about their products and
  
• distribution arrangements for their ONLY sketchbook which can be used for proper watercolour.

Recommendations

My advice is to have a think about you how can get the best sketchbook for your needs and also influence future product design and pricing by providing feedback to the manufacturer.

For example:

• Think about learning how to make your own sketchbooks from your own favourite watercolour paper. That way, you get to determine the type and quality of the paper you want to use.
  
• Always provide feedback to the manufacturer if you are ever disappointed with a product. Let them know precisely why you are disappointed. If you want a better quality product tell them!
  
• Always provide feedback to your local art shop - they need to know when products aren't doing the job as good suppliers will also provide feedback to manufacturers.
  
• Write about your experience with your sketchbook in your blog. Intelligent art materials manufacturers keep an eye out for what people are saying about their products! I've know completely new products emerge as a result of adverse comments by artists on the Internet! :)
  

Check out my resource site Paper and Non-Canvas Supports - Resources for Artists to find out more about different papers and sketchbooks