Review: Wild Dot Plant-based Watercolour Paint

Singapore-based Wild Dot is founded by Shirin and Liz and they sell watercolour paint made from plants.

I was surprised to see that the paint came pans cut out from a wooden block. If you take a look at their Etsy shop, they actually use a beer(?) bottle cap as a pan to hold the paint.

Main thing you need to know about plant-based watercolour paint is they are organic and lightfast quality is not going match mineral, inorganic or synthetic paint.

The colours here are Blue Pea, Mahogany Sienna and Lemongrass Yellow.

The colours look nice but certainly not as vibrant compared to watercolour from well-known brands.

This is the gray you can mixed with the blue and brown.

The colours are transparent and good for painting over pen and ink.

I did not test the lightfast quality, but since these are organic paint, lightfast will be a concern. Using these colours in sketchbooks should be fine but they are definitely not suitable for display art.

Since the colours don't have high tinting strength, it's difficult to mix intense or dark colours.

The paint do dissolve quite readily with water, and are easy to mix with. The paint don't granulate so those texture you see are actually from the coldpress watercolour paper.

When I went to read more about the paint, I found out Blue Pea paint was made from flowers of Blue Pea vine, and is used as food colouring too. Mahogany paint was made with horticultural prunings, wood chip. To squeeze colour out of plants and wood must have taken a lot of effort.

At the time of this review, Wild Dot only sells two colours Blue Pea and Mahogany Brown on their Etsy shop. Each pan is priced at S$11.90 (around US $9) and global shipping is calculated separately.

You can read more about the paint or get them at
https://wildd.myportfolio.com
https://www.etsy.com/shop/WildDotSG