Testing Pastel Watercolors at the Coffee Shop

Hi, I'm Valerie Englehart, and this week I packed up my travel kit and headed down to The Muse Coffee & Whiskey House on the Everett waterfront (or is it Whiskey & Coffee House? I honestly still don't know, but I love the place either way). I was there to test out a new set of pastel Fuumuui watercolor paints called Macaron, and as always, testing paints at a cafe turns into its own little adventure.

Why Roses This Time

Normally when I get a new set of paints, I reach for an iris. It's my go-to test subject. But this time I decided to switch it up and paint roses instead — a yellow rose up top, a pink rose below, and some leaves in a few different shades of green tying them together.

I didn't have a reference image. I've painted enough roses at this point that I just know how they look, and honestly, that's part of why I keep coming back to the same subjects over and over. The more you paint something, the more familiar you get with it, until eventually you can just sit down at a cafe and whip one out without overthinking it. Though I'll admit, it can still feel a little nerve-wracking when people are watching over your shoulder. I did have someone wander over, a bit surprised that I wasn't painting a boat, since we were sitting right on the waterfront. Maybe next time.

My Setup

For this one, I kept things simple:

A Paul Rubens sketchbook, which I like because it has perforated edges A size six Escoda travel brush — soft, with a fine point, which meant I only needed one brush for the entire painting. As long as I'm using the right pressure, that one brush can cover wide washes or get into tiny details

First Impressions of the Fuumuui Macaron Set

These paints are opaque, since they all have some white mixed in, which gives them that soft, pastel, almost creamy quality. I usually paint with a really wide range of values, but with this set, my darkest color was still basically a mid-tone at best, like a pastel purple. That took some adjusting.

The set comes with quite a few colors already mixed, so I wasn't doing much color mixing myself. But I do love that classic watercolor move of dropping a color into a wet area and letting it fuse and merge on its own. I did that in a few spots, especially in the leaves. And here's the thing I noticed: I liked the effect so much more when I painted with a darker color first and then dropped in something lighter, versus the other way around. It was especially noticeable in the cooler viridian leaves, where dropping in a warmer yellow-green or even a touch of pink gave a much nicer result than starting light and adding dark.

Painting the Petals

Once the roses had dried, I went in with the tip of my brush to add detail. Yellow on yellow doesn't really give you anything to work with, so I used pink for the folds in the petals instead, since I already had a pink rose to pull from. That gave me an upper rose that's mostly yellow with pink accents, and a lower rose that's mostly pink with a touch of yellow.

For the pink rose specifically, I leaned into more of a purple tone to build out the folds in the petals. But like most of my roses, it really just started as a blobby shape, and I figured out the rest as I went.

What Surprised Me About These Paints

I expected these pastel colors, with all that white pigment mixed in, to lift really easily off the paper. They didn't. There's some lifting once it's dry if I really push for it, but for the most part, once it's down, it stays down. It doesn't bleed the way my usual watercolors do, so my typical technique of laying down paint and then softening it needed some rethinking. It's just something to get used to.

I also tried using some blue to negative-paint some veins into the leaves, and honestly, technique-wise, it wasn't working the way I wanted. But I liked the texture it created, so I leaned into it on one side of the leaf and let it bleed away naturally.

The Final Composition

I built this whole composition in my head, so it ended up at an angle, but I made sure to keep it flowing in an S curve, since that's just naturally more visually appealing. And because all my edges are hard-edged rather than soft and blended, I can scan this one into my computer and maybe even turn it into a pattern down the line. Not everything has to become a final product, but it's nice to have the option.

Try Something Different

Looking back at this piece, I really do love how the roses turned out. I think I could have pushed the greenery a bit further, but overall it's a good start, and it's very different from what I usually reach for. I don't typically gravitate toward pastels, but there are so many artists out there doing beautiful work in these whimsical, creamy, dreamy tones, and I've always admired it from a distance.

But here's the thing: just because you appreciate something doesn't mean you have to emulate it. So why not just try it and see how it feels? That's really my takeaway from this whole painting. Whatever you usually paint, whatever colors you usually reach for, try something else every once in a while. Just make sure it's something that excites you, because if it doesn't, you're not going to want to actually do it.