I don’t usually do art supply reviews here, but when the folks at Viviva Colors contacted me to offer a sample of their Colorsheets watercolor set, I couldn’t resist. Viviva Colorsheets are a slim, portable, pocket notebook sized booklet of watercolor paints: right up my alley! At least in theory…

First off, the packaging is lovely. The booklet of paints came packaged in a cute envelope. The booklet itself is also really nicely designed, with a colorful flower design on the outside. At 2.75 x 5.25 inches, the Colorsheets are a great size to tuck into a sketchbook. They are too thick to fit inside a hardcover pocket sketchbook without bending the covers or possibly breaking the spine– or at least they are beyond my comfort level for doing so. I know other people often stuff their sketchbooks with all sorts of things that really fatten them up!

Inside the booklet are 4 page spreads with 4 colors each. When I saw the patches of paint, it made me recall some kind of similar watercolor paints that used to be included with Cracker Jack prizes or some other little children’s toy. You’d get maybe 3 tiny paint swatches to color in some tiny picture with a wet Qtip. The Viviva Colorsheets take that concept to a much higher level. Each color has a rectangle of paint that measures about 2.25 x 1.75″. The thickness is smaller than I could measure with a ruler but my very very rough estimate is that the volume of paint is maybe 1/4 of what you’d get in a typical watercolor half-pan. But the pigments seem more dense, so in theory you can use them more sparingly. The manufacturer claims they should last about as long as a traditional half pan.

The paints are separated by a water repellent sheet so they will never contaminate each other or stick together while wet. Viviva does recommend that you let the colors dry before fully closing the booklet, so I guess they can stick to the protective sheet when dry.

The page edges are staggered so you can see which colors are on each page. Some of these printed color tabs are less accurate than others but they give you a good idea where to go. Then next to each paint patch, you can dab a splash of the actual paint to see the true color. This is quite necessary because the paints themselves look nothing like the colors they produce on white paper! Some of the paint patches look almost metallic and remind me of photos I’ve seen of fountain pen inks that have a two-tone effect in the sheen. Viridian looks coppery but turns out to be a beautiful greenish turquoise. Peacock Blue looks like metallic purple, but turns out to be a cerulean blue.

The booklet comes with a coated sheet of extra cardboard that you can stick into the back cover and use as a mixing palette to blend colors or add more water for a lighter wash. It wipes clean afterwards, or at least mine did, but I didn’t let any paint dry there. I didn’t have it attached to the booklet when I tested it but I could see that it might be awkward to use that way. The fold-out design of my favorite pocket watercolor box (found in various artist and student-grade sets by Sennelier, Schminke, Schpirerr Farben, Arteza or available empty) is much more practical for one-handed use, if not as lightweight. There are other designs for lightweight, portable watercolor sets, such as this one, that I haven’t tried, but that look like they would be a bit easier to use than Viviva.

The colors are bright and vivid. (Here I’ve tested them in the Moleskine Watercolor Notebook.) The choice of colors included is pretty good, but I found that the reds and oranges and yellows all seemed a bit too similar to me. One red was slightly warmer, but not by much. The Gold Ochre is the lightest yellow, so people used to using a more typical watercolor set might be disappointed not to have a lighter, cooler yellow, like lemon yellow. These are all more intense, like a cadmium yellow or a permanent yellow, though if you add a lot of water you can get a lighter shade, as you see in my random test page, vs. the color swatch page where I didn’t use as much water. Viviva offers another set of colors, the “Spring Set,” which offers some different shades, but I did not receive one of those to try.

The biggest downside to the Viviva Colorsheets was not apparent until I took the photographs for this review. I had done my test painting a few days earlier and didn’t re-wet anything, but as I was handling the booklet to take photos, I realized that I had pink stains all over my hands. And on my computer, and my light box, and my desk. I realized that the magenta color seemed to be leaving pink dust all over everything, and was even present inside the original packaging envelope. What I’d thought was just a quirk of how the booklet cover was printed was actually smears of magenta dust. I washed my hands, wiped things down, and then did all of that again a couple of times. This dust is insidious. (You can see the pink stains on my thumb in a couple of the photos above.)

I was going to just say that the design of the booklet makes it likely that you might get paint on your fingers while you are flipping from one color to another. And that if you’re that worried about getting paint on your fingers, you should wear gloves, or just not paint at all. Paints can be toxic, so washing your hands is necessary anyway. But this goes beyond the expected level of mess you’d get with any paints. My Viviva set arrived with no evidence of damage in the mail, and I never dropped it or bent it or did anything that would destabilize the adherence of the paint. If the colors are so unstable that they dissolve and get pink powder everywhere, that is a big fail. I can only imagine how much worse it might have been with the actual in-the-field use a portable set is presumably made for.

I was originally going to say that the Viviva Colorsheets were well worth a try, as their $20 price seemed reasonable for a fun, portable watercolor set for casual use. But I now have to say that I can’t recommend this product.