Mijello is a Korean company that was already well known for their quality paint palettes before they launched their own watercolor paints in 2012. According to my little research, their paints received some bad reviews at first for having a lot of fugitive pigments and they have quickly reformulated their line (105 colors) with more reliable and well known pigments. They are still critiqued for the way they name their colors, and I agree the names can be confusing, but as long as they clearly state the pigments used, I have no problem with that. In 2017, they released 21 new colors, which totals 126 today, being 50 of them pure pigment colors.
I have been eyeing these paints for a long time, especially their Pure Pigment Set, that comes in a black cardboard box, with 24 x 15ml tubes, plus 2 x 7,5ml tubes for black and white. Since I don't have access to Amazon (not in viable shipping costs, anyway), I recurred to eBay. To my surprise, I found a second Pure Pigment set, that comes in a golden cardboard box, with 19 of the same colors as the black box, but 7 different colors, 6 of them released in 2017. I looked for this set in their website, but I couldn't find it listed there. I've contacted them to know what the deal was, but they didn't answer me. I searched for it on Youtube and could only find one artist who had any acquaintance with the new colors (this cool guy here).
Finally, I've decided to get the new set no one seems to know about and I'm going to show it here! For your pleasure!
And mine! hehehe
So, my expectations were:
• intensity / richness of color (high pigment load)
• vibrancy / low drying shift (colors don't change much after dried)
• juiciness (they don't dry completely when put on a palette and are easy to reactivate)
• low dispersion / flow (that was a negative, but I was willing to work with that. Apparently, they don't use ox gall in their paints, and I do find that ox gall is really important for flow, although many people avoid it for being animal based)
And were my expectations met? I'd say 95%, yes. And for the better! That is because the flow was not as bad as I expected. I notice a small diference in flow when I use Daniel Smith or M. Graham, but it's not like Mission Gold does not disperse at all, it just disperses a little less. And I definitely can work with that. I think you can see it for yourself in my swatches video (below).
In these swatches, I started with a heavy load of paint over the black line, to see how transparent they are, then added water as I go down. After the paint was dry, I added the lightfastness, transparency and staining properties of each paint, as provided by the manufacturer. All this info is in each paint tube, which is nice! But I don't always agree with their info. In some cases, I think the paint is more transparent than they say (for example, Permanent Rose is fully transparent over the black line) and sometimes it's more opaque than they say (Cobalt Turquoise). I hope you can see by the picture (click to see full size).
5 stars - Extremely Lightfast
4 stars - Good Lightfastness
3 stars - Lightfast
The little square informs transparency (empty - transparent; crossed - semi-transparent; full - opaque).
The triangle informs staining (empty - non-staining; half-full - semi-staining; full - staining)
I have not tested the the lightfastness (obviously, lol) or staining properties, but I can tell they are mostly more or less staining, with a few exceptions (Ultramarine, Cobalt Green Deep, etc.)
As you may know, the more transparent the pigment, the more prone it is to be staining, and vice-versa, because of the size of the particles. Also, the finer the pigments, the less granulation you get. And these paints are mostly non-granulating, transparent and staining.
In the swatches image above, I've marked the colors that are NOT in the other Pure Pigment Set. They are:
With the exception of Cobalt Turquoise, the others are all new (2017) releases.
As you can see, they included a new Burnt Sienna, as an alternative to the very critiqued Burnt Sienna No.1 (a mixture of pigments that did not mix to a neutral grey with Ultramarine). This Burnt Sienna, although still not made with the expected PBr7, but with PR102 instead, mixes to beautiful neutrals.
I still have to experiment and play a lot with these brand new babies to see how far they'll take me, but so far I'm in love! They are gorgeous!!!
I've never had so many artist grade paint in front of me before and just looking at them makes me happy!
They are far more affordable (in a set, not individually) than my other artist grade brands. They cost me US87,15, shipping included, which makes US3,63 per tube, 15ml tube! (Not counting black and white, I count them as bonus).
I hope this blog post helps you make an informed decision if you plan to invest in this brand. If you want to see how these cuties go on paper, I've put together a video of me swatching them (my first video, so I've made a few mistakes...).
Thanks for reading and happy painting!
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EDIT: (Additon info)
This set does not come with the 28 color mixing pamphlet like the first one. But since this set has many of the same pigments as the first one, you could try and make many of the same mixes suggested in that mixing pamphlet.
This is the pamphlet that came with this set (below). It shows the 50 Pure Pigment colors by Mission:
To mix the new colors, you'll have to do your own mixing tests. Maybe start with a big mixing chart like I did, here:
