Make your art shine with Fine-tec Pearlescent watercolours

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I’ve always been curious about pearlescent watercolours. They look interesting to work with, and like they’d be fun to play around with, so when I was given a set as a gift, I was pretty excited to try them out.

I have the 24-colour set of Fine-Tec Pearlescent colours. About half of the set is warm colours and the other half is cool colours including black and a very pale silver that is essentially white. The set also includes a couple of their flip-flop colours, which is a paint colour that changes depending on the angle you are viewing it from.

A quick note – I call them watercolours but that aren’t actually labeled as watercolours. They’re water-soluble pearlescent colours, and can be used very similarly to both watercolours and gouache. They can also be used with calligraphy pens, although I haven’t tested them for that purpose.

Watch me swatch the set and give my thoughts on my YouTube channel.

Testing the pearlescent watercolours

I have swatched the full set on two types of watercolour paper – black paper and white paper. I found all the colours looked fantastic on the black paper. They were all opaque and vibrant on black. The white paper, however, wasn’t such a great surface. You may be able to build up some opacity, but I found that on white, most of the colours seemed a bit patchy and not very vibrant.

pearlescent watercolours swatched on white paper — Pearlescent watercolours swatched on white paper

pearlescent watercolours swatched on black paper — Pearlescent watercolours swatched on black paper

The set includes two flip-flop colours. Patina, which is the paint that looks green in the palette is supposed to change from blue to green to a green-yellow. Twilight is another paint is supposed to change from blue to purple. I didn’t find either changed much and they aren’t really worth it for that feature.

two close-up photos of paint colours showing different hues depending on the angle — The two flip-flop colours shown from different angles to show the colour changes

There are essentially six or seven different variations of gold in the set, if you include the bronzes. That’s more than I think most people would ever use. I’d rather if the set included more greens and blues to give people variety. Especially if I think about the types of projects people might use this for, such as adding iridescence to a bird’s feathers, blues and greens would be very useful.

a set of pearlescent watercolour paints and a sheet of black paper with iridescent flowers and leaves painted on it

The colours don’t mix great. I wanted to see if I could mix some greens with all the different golds, and the could of blues. I didn’t have a ton of luck with that. I was able to create a few different greens using the patina colour, but in general, your mixing will be a bit limited.

Final thoughts

All in all, despite the limitations, I’m looking forward to trying out the set even further. I plan to do more painting on black paper. I also think that they’ll pair wonderfully with regular watercolour paints, where I might just want to add a bit of shimmer here or there.