Review: Shinhan PWC Extra Fine Artists' Watercolor

Thanks for that, I wanted to try them for a long time, now I will. Hope you'll be happy in your new apartment.

Thank you for all your hard work and dedication to giving people your honest opinion about the products you try it is very helpful to someone like me trying to get set up to learn how to watercolor. Is there any books you can recommend. Enjoy your new apartment and time with your family.

Yup, the price is right, and the colours are nice and vibrant.
But there are two things about Shinhan that people should be careful about.
1) They use some very odd choices of pigments. Some of these are known to be less lightfast (check them at http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/palette1.html). Others may just be uncommon choices, but ok.
And their naming conventions are a mishmash of common paint names, sometimes applied to the weirdest combo of pigments.
2) Look for 'PWC'; don't accidentally buy their so-called 'Professional' line of watercolours, which uses even more oddball, suspect pigments, combined with dyes & fillers. (The 'Pro' line is a decent Student-grade paint – if you know that's what you want.) The name 'Professional' is misleading marketing.
However, if you research pigments, and carefully buy single-pigment tubes with pigments you trust, there are some bargains within their top, PWC line (the one reviewed here). I have around 5 tubes, and am happy with them; and there are another half dozen that I would consider buying.
Only buy the multi-tube sets if you don't care about long term fade-resistance, or will keep your images light-free inside sketchbooks. For that purpose, these paints are more than fine.

Hi Teoh,
I would like to ask the difference between PWC and SWC in the market. PWC seems to have a blue packaging and SWC has white. Can you tell the difference? SWC seems to be more expensive though. Thanks!

I noticed same issue when I was buying my ones. To me it seems to be the issue of packaging and branding. 32 color sets with SWC name are not Shamy watercolors, it is same set as PWC but meant to be sold on Korean Market. The boxes with PWC logo are meant for International market customers.

'Oddball' is the right word. I have an old collection of ShinHan Professional Artist's Colors, bought many years ago, in 20ml tubes, and each color is identified only by a number. None of the familiar Naples Yellow, Alizarin Crimson, etc., to give at least some idea what kind of red or yellow is inside the tube. Just a number. And I've tried finding a catalog of colors to match against the numbers. No luck so far. I need to do a spread of them in the next few days, to see what's what for myself. If they are the slightest bit muddy, out they go and that's it for ShinHan.

Edit: It turns out that what I have is, according to ShinHan, not strictly watercolor, but "Professional Korean Color', and they suggest using their own 'Painting glue' for mixing colors. They also recommend the color for use on "hanji" Korean Rice paper. So I will proceed carefully. I don't want to risk dipping a $20 Escoda brush into paint that isn't water-soluble, and I still don't know what exactly this stuff is. The ShinHan Custie Service person just identified them as "Professional Korean Colors", and supplied no more information than that. Not an approach that inspires confidence in me.

There is a catalog with all their products and color pallets on Shinhan Art Website. I have PWC tubes and I have Shinhan Professional set. I really like this watercolor.