Every product I have purchased from Paul Rubens brand is a winner.

Very positive:
1. The 24 watercolor pans are quality colors, intense & smooth. Fantastic!
2. My only regret is that I did not purchase the 48 colors. Will do that in future.
3. So appreciative of the solid metal case: this will last a lifetime & will endure the usual rough & tumble "on the go" handling.

Urgent suggestion for the manufacturer:
1. Please print your information in English for the Amazon global market. So few of us can read the beautiful but complicated Chinese characters.

For the consumer:
1. It is possible, but very tedious & time consuming, to label each paint pan. The English name of the paint is on the colorful wrapper around each paint pan-- which has to be removed to uncover the paint. You can carefully label each pan one by one & kept each wrapper.
2. Lightfastness & pigment numbers needed on all 24 colors--in English.
3. I patiently labeled all 24 pans because this product is worth the effort.
With sincere thanks for the high quality of these watercolor paints at a very reasonable price.

ATTENTION MANUFACTURER--Marketing suggestion for increase in sales:
Love the colors in this 24 color set. Since there are 48 colors, I only need the remaining 24 colors.
It is wasteful to purchase the 48 color set since the initial 24 are repeated.

SUGGESTION: Divide the 48 set into box #1 & Box #2.
INCREASE your sales: I am sure many people will buy box #2 once they try box #1.
Thank you for considering the needs of your loyal customers.

High pigment load, easy to activate with a wet brush, react as expected with salt and disperse normally in water. For as cheap as this set was, compared to my other professional grade watercolors like Schmincke Horadam, Winsor and Newton Professional, Sennelier, Rembrandt etc, I am astoundingly impressed. I am actually sad I bought all those expensive sets! A whopping 20 of the 24 colors are single pigment colors (not mixtures, that can be prone to muddying when further mixing colors). All of which were labeled with both color names and the pigment ingredients, and they used nice quality lightfast ones.

This is an ideal set for those who paint small or infrequently, as half pans are fairly small. It's a great set for professional artists also just starting out or needing a travel palette, who later plan to refill the empty pans with more economical tubes from companies such as Daniel Smith or Mission Gold. Most of these pigments can be found in all professional artist quality paint brands.

There are unique colors in this set not typically found in 24 color selections, such as the granulating cobalt and cerulean blues. The worst part about the color selection is it is missing a bright primary magenta. You can still mix a great deal of colors from this set, as there are several shades of blue red and yellows, however it will be hard to get those vibrant floral pinks. However, unlike almost every other set I have, they did not include a useless white watercolor that many companies throw in because it is cheap. White watercolor is so transparent that it does not work well for mixing, if you wanted a lighter shade you add more water, if you want opaque pastel you would use white gouache instead - so I'm really glad they didn't include white.

As of May 2018 this item also appears to be the same as the blue box version for 5 dollars less (about 40 dollars vs 45 called MEEDEN 24 Colors Artist Professional Watercolor) and the images both show the Paul Rubens name (based on the old artist Peter Paul Rubens, not the actor pee-wee herman).

I previously purchased the 24-pan set (back when it was $38) and enjoyed the formula of the paints (it is affordable, reasonably vibrant, rewets like butter, layers well, and most of the colors are single pigments). Unfortunately, I rarely reach for this set because two of the three reds included are not lightfast ("scarlet" is the same pigment as "perylene scarlet," which is lovely but not fully lightfast, and the "madder red" is made of the beautiful but highly fugitive PR177). However, recently the 48-pan set went on sale, and I took a gamble and purchased it.

I am thrilled by my purchase and can see myself reaching for the 48-pan set frequently! These paints have the same enjoyable formula as the 24-set but with a massive selection of mostly single pigment colors (38 single pigment colors). After examining the pigments in-depth, I found that most of the paints within this set are lightfast. The color selection also includes many of my favorite pigments (Phthalo's, Cadmium's, Cobalt's, and Quinacridone's), as well as some more uncommon pigments/versions of pigments I did not already own (e.g., "Naples Yellow Light," "The Peacock Blue" "Turquoise Light", "Lemon Sienna," "Naple Yellow," and "Ivory Black"). The only negative about this set (which is the reason I gave 4 stars instead of 5) is that many of these colors cannot be purchased separately (in america) so when I run out, refills will be difficult to obtain.

Although I got these paints on sale (around $50), Paul Ruben's 48 half pan set is still a very affordable option when compared to similar sets from other artists grade paint brands (Rembrandt's 48 set sells for between $140 and $160, Schmincke Horadam's 48 set sells for between $230 and $250, and Sennelier's 48 set sells for between $250 and $260). Ultimately, I would recommend Paul Ruben's 48 half pan set, even at full price, to intermediate and professional artists (though not beginners because such a large color selection would likely be overwhelming and impede learning about color mixing).

I have included pictures of swatches that include the common names for the pigments (not the names given by Paul Rubens) and two of the paintings I made with these watercolors:

I put off buying these for months and months because I have all the Finetecs, a bunch of Twinkling H2Os and I have the full set of Rivenvale metallics (what I consider, and still consider, the BEST metallic watercolor on the market- hands down) so the Rubens just seemed like more of a "another metallic watercolor, must have for my collection but don't really need" purchase.

But the Finetecs/Rivenvale don't have pastel/bright colors, and the Twinkling H2Os are really too difficult to use often (ridiculous jars they come in, plus they are very difficult to rewet and paint large areas with- tired of sacrificing storage space and brushes and time to those paints) so I decided to get these to just have those kind of tropical/bright colors and have a set that is more suited for white paper. The Finetecs have great earthy colors, but their main downfall is that they don't show well on white paper.

I wasn't expecting much from the Rubens but I was *very* surprised at the quality. Very, very surprised. They do need a drop of water to activate, but once they are wet and you move your brush in the pan, the paint immediately comes to life. The paints are creamy, full bodies, and rich in both pigment *and* shimmer. They are true metallics- not just watercolor paint based with a tiny bit of shimmer that barely shows up.

The colors are saturated on white paper and can be made either opaque or transparent based on water usage. While they are not as opaque out of the pan as the Finetecs and the Rivenvales, if you work the paint a little with a brush (not enough to damage the brush, though- they are a nice consistency, unlike the Twinkling H2Os) you can get a gouache-like consistency. And the shimmer/sparkle is beautiful and bright.

The Rubens don't do as well on dark papers, which is kind of a bummer, but considering I got these so I could do more metallic work on white watercolor paper they work perfectly.

The Rubens are a little more "straightforward" of a metallic, like most of the Finetecs, in that the micas in each paint match the pigment- the Twinkling H2Os do this thing where they mix different pigments/dyes with different micas and shimmers so that the paints come in a totally unique range of colors/effects but the Rubens are much easier to use and they can be mixed, unlike the Twinkling (because of the color combos in the dye/pigment of each Twinkling jar, a lot of times you'll mix two colors and get mud even if the colors, in theory, should be fine together).

I think I'm going to finally clear out the Twinklings and have the Rubens be my go to metallic-on-white palette. I like them so much that if Rubens introduced a different set of shimmer colors or another set of speciality colors (the Rubens do have a range of candy color pastel watercolors and color shifting watercolors available overseas, so I DO hope they put those in pan form and introduce them to the US market very soon) I wouldn't hesitate to order them without reading a single review or seeing a video about them- the quality is there.

HIGHLY RECOMMEND.

Chinese company, so there is a translation error or mislabel of some of the paint colors. That is the only con. (Third picture). Pros: I love the paints. Vibrant color professional quality. Free towel is the best I've ever used.