Saturday, 9 April 2016

From The Vaults: More Winsor and Newton discontinued colours!

So, I went back to my local art shop today and asked if I could have the rest of those discontinued Winsor and Newton Professional Water Colours that I saw yesterday and, could I have them for £1.00 each, per the price they gave me yesterday. The lady on the till had to call the lady I dealt with yesterday, who is evidently more superior, and it was agreed I could have the 5 tubes of Winsor and Newton Professional Water Colour AND 3 tubes of Daler and Rowney Designers' Gouache for £1 each - that gave me a pretty good bargain if you look at current prices - I've marked all discontinued products with an asterisk (*). NB: one of them is another tube of 017 Aurora Yellow that I bought yesterday as I liked the colour and decided I wanted some more.



Daler and Rowney Designers' Gouache
(I've linked the ones I can find on Amazon.co.uk, but I know all 3 are still in circulation based on Daler and Rowney's colour charts)
351 Mint , Series B = £6.31 ["normally permanent"]
533 Mars Red , Series B = £6.31 ["moderately permanent"]
589 Vermilion Red, Series D = £8.31 ["moderately permanent"]




Winsor and Newton Professional Watercolours
(As some of these are in packaging that dates back to 1974, they could well be 42 years old...! As such, some information is missing from the packaging but I have contacted the company and ask them for their help to fill in the blanks)
017 Aurora Yellow*, Series 4 = £8.80 ["A"]
037 Prussian Green*, Series 1 = £5.90 [?]
006 Bright Red*, Series 1 = £5.90 [?]
054 Winsor Emerald, Series 1 = £5.90 [?]
331 Ivory Black, Series 1 = £5.90 ["AA"]

Total value: £53.33 [US$75.33, A$99.76, €66.07, C$97.86]
I paid: £8.00 [US$11.30, A$14.96, €9.91, C$14.68]
SAVING: £45.33 [US$64.03, A$84.79, €56.16, C$83.18]

Not bad huh? Even Lindsay The Frugal Crafter would be pushing it to get such a good bargain and she's amazing at bargains - I wish we had couponing in the UK in the same sense as in the USA - and she's a fantastic watercolourist who is incredibly generous with her time and is one of my favourite YouTube artists and crafters.

So, in terms of giving them a try! I've not touched the gouache yet, nor 017 Aurora Yellow as I did that yesterday so I've just kept the tube as stock. The other colours were interesting when I opened them!




037 Prussian Green, for wont of a better word, was kind of constipated! I could not squeeze anything out but the tube felt soft, not like it had hardened in the tube. I pushed a cocktail stick down the neck and after a lot of squeezing managed to get about 1/3 of the tube into my palette. A quick mist with water and I'm going to let it dry down overnight before I try and test it.




006 Bright Red, this one was actually fine - a little stiffer than is usual but the binder had not separated at all, even after what could have been 42 years sitting around in a tube!




054 Winsor Emerald was much like 017 Aurora Yellow was yesterday - texture was totally fine but there was some binder separation - a stir with a cocktail stick soon sorted that out.




331 Ivory Black felt fine but when I opened the tube there was a lot of gas! It didn't smell bad and there was no separation or setting, it just felt like an air-pocket in the tube to be honest. It had a perfectly good texture, if a little jelly-like and wobbly.

I've left all of them to set overnight before I test them for colour and mixing, as per.

To update the 017 Aurora Yellow I tested yesterday, I can confirm it has dried really well into the palette and the stuff I painted out yesterday has now dried and looks fantastic. I've added some extra pictures to the post from yesterday.

2 comments:

  1. Oh I love discontinued paints! I scored a set of more than 70 W&N artists halfpans from the 1990's, so all of them are discontinued. So fun! What was the biggest treasure of all was the genuine manganese blue, which is hopeless to find today. :)

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  2. You're welcome. There aren't many W+N colours from the 90s that have been discontinued - they retired some in 97, 02 and about 09. I've found tubes from 1970s in my local art store's clearance stock - they work perfectly well, even if you have to cut the tube of of them!

    Manganese Blue (Genuine) is still made by Old Holland and a few other companies.
    r

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