Yoseka Ceramics Watercolors
Creator: Bethany Wu
Year: 2022
Creator: Bethany Wu
Year: 2022
In 2022, Traveler’s Company and their partner shops hosted an event, “Travel and Sketch”, encouraging stationery lovers to explore the world and document their experiences in the form of sketches. I developed a bonus activity for Yoseka Stationery to reward their customers who visited their shop in Greenpoint, NY: a paint station that featured custom handmade watercolor paints to use in their travel sketches. The initial project also included a limited production of 25 units per color for in-store sales. This set of eight custom handmade watercolors would color match and mimic the unique qualities of the exclusive Yoseka Ceramics fountain pen inks.
The Yoseka Ceramic Watercolors are blends of multiple pigments to achieve a close color match with the inks. All pigments are premixed into individual batches and then blended together at their designated ratios, mulled again to ensure fully mixed, and finally set into watercolor pans for drying and packaging.
The Yoseka Ceramic Watercolors are blends of multiple pigments to achieve a close color match with the inks. All pigments are premixed into individual batches and then blended together at their designated ratios, mulled again to ensure fully mixed, and finally set into watercolor pans for drying and packaging.
The Yoseka Ceramics Inks colors could be categorized into two groups - Shading inks and Sheening inks, and the focus of this product development was to replicate the two unique fountain pen ink properties in watercolor paints.
Before creating the paints, we had to answer a few fundamental questions - Do sheening and shading properties exist in watercolor products already? If not, would it be possible to replicate the ink effect in watercolor? |
Shading
When a writing ink is not immediately absorbed, there is more “floating” time on the paper. This allows the ink to travel and unevenly distribute across the written wet area. The areas where ink pools often appear darker, while areas that dry faster are less opaque. Can the ink property be recreated with existing watercolor products? The look of shading ink can be mimicked with most diluted watercolor by using a painting technique called glazing, which is applying the watercolor on paper in thin layers as they dry. However, fountain pen ink produces this uneven distribution with a single stroke, so it is important that the paint can behave the same with a similar application process. Another watercolor feature that mimics shading is painting with high granulation watercolors. High granulating watercolor paints are often made with pigments that come in irregular and larger particle sizes. When a paint made with such pigments is used with more water, an uneven texture appears on paper where pigment particles gather and settle in patches. This appearance is called granulation. |
Watercolor creation process
The greatest challenge for these watercolors was finding heavier pigments with larger particle size, while also ensuring that the selection of pigments were of similar proportion so that the blended mixture would remain homogeneous.
The varying particle sizes posed a few difficulties during the production process, especially in the mulling and swatching phases. It was crucial for the final mixture to be at maximum saturation so that the paint still presented some color value even if used with a lot of water, however, the irregularity of the pigment particles meant a labor-intensive mulling process and uncertainty due to larger particles not fully immersing into the mixture. The only way to check was to periodically take swatches and test the paint until it was fully blended.
The greatest challenge for these watercolors was finding heavier pigments with larger particle size, while also ensuring that the selection of pigments were of similar proportion so that the blended mixture would remain homogeneous.
The varying particle sizes posed a few difficulties during the production process, especially in the mulling and swatching phases. It was crucial for the final mixture to be at maximum saturation so that the paint still presented some color value even if used with a lot of water, however, the irregularity of the pigment particles meant a labor-intensive mulling process and uncertainty due to larger particles not fully immersing into the mixture. The only way to check was to periodically take swatches and test the paint until it was fully blended.
Sheening
When an ink takes a longer time to dry, the ink is slowly absorbed into the paper, sometimes leaving a thin film of residual content to rest and eventually dry atop the paper showing a slight metallic rim. For a more dramatic effect, the metallic rim tends to be a color that contrasts with the ink base color. Can the ink property be recreated with existing watercolor products? At the time of research, there weren’t any watercolor products marketed with similar qualities. However, while it was unclear why it happened, some custom blended handmade watercolors showed signs of pigment separation when used with a lot of water. |
Watercolor creation process
The approach was to create two color blends - blend (1) for the primary base color and blend (2) for the “sheening” metallic rim. The goal was to combine the two color blends into one mixture but still separate once the paint was applied to paper. Watercolors that mimicked sheening fountain pen inks consisted of two color blends.
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