Adding Honey and Glycerin to Watercolor Paints 

Fun fact: honey does not expire. It can last thousands of years without ever going bad. Microorganisms can’t grow in it due to the enzymes present Also the reason it keeps watercolors “juicy” is because honey is naturally hygroscopic, meaning it attracts water from the air

Gliserin also helps gouache to settle in to pans with out cracking

I've added glycerin to winsor and newton cotman colours. Some were completely unusable because I added too much glycerin and the paint never dried. But the ones that I got right rewet beautifully :)

I put Honey to very cheap colors, cause there was no way to let it try in a pan. It broke too much and by rewetting you did get little peaces of color in your Brush. With Honey you could Let it try it and rewet the color very easyly. And color was getting much brighter. Please fogive my bad englisch schools over since 40 years and I uses my schools englisch mit often. Greetings Form Germany Yvy

Thank you for this! I would not have guessed glycerin would be the winner. Glycerin "is a colorless, odorless, viscous liquid that is sweet-tasting and non-toxic. The glycerol backbone is found in all lipids known as triglycerides. It is widely used in the food industry as a sweetener and humectant and in pharmaceutical formulations." It's an essential structural components of all fats (this includes oils), but by itself, it is not a fat.

I live near several bee keepers. All 4 , in this area, say that the first honeys are very light. They also usually keep this for themselves as they all prize this honey. So I get a small amount in the late spring when they take the first off.

Thanks so much for this comparison, it is very helpful! I have some W&N PB15 and it dries so hard compared to what I’m used to. I tried adding a drop of glycerin to the pan - and it came out with a consistency similar to the Daniel Smith PB15 (both “Manganese Blue Hue”). However, this was not the best solution for me, as I find that formula gives an unusual, sort of blotchy texture, and I was thinking about trying honey instead. This video is super helpful in that I can see/confirm what others might call “a drop”, and it’s also nice to know that even professional artists gotta try stuff out in order to know how it’ll work. Thanks again Denise, looking forward to checking out your channel and I’ll probably see you soon on Skillshare!

Fun video! I love to experiment! I've been using glycerine to revive my watercolors for years. I did discover that it is best diluted in water and sprayed onto the palette. I found that just covering the bottom of the little spray bottle with glycerine and then filling it with water is plenty. I shake it every time I use it as it separates. I don't use it unless paint will not reconstitute. If a pan looks dull, it usually doesn't reconstitute easily. I add a spritz or two and more water and let it sit and it is usually fine. If a tube has dried out, I peel the tube off and put the chunk of paint in a small container that can be resealed. I spray it with my glycerine mixture and add some water and let it sit, covered, for a day or two. That's usually long enough to make it workable again. When I added too much glycerine, it becomes permanently sticky - in the pan and on the painting. That is discouraging! I know that some pigments are more difficult than others to reconstitute. I only use M. Graham or other honey-based brands when buying Viridian, because I cannot reconstitute other brands thoroughly. If paints flake out of the palette, I add water and a bit more paint on the bottom and push the flaked paint back into that. Cracks don't bother me - it's just when it pops off the palette that I find it is a problem.

Your honey/glycerine demonstration came up in a google search. Your comments were timely and very helpful to me. I've recently started experimenting with pigment dispersion's using honey and dextrin with the gum arabic solution. You've inspired me to see how well glycerin does under the same circumstances. Appearances seem to indicate it worth trying! Thank you

Every time I watch your videos, I learn something new and gain a new perspective. Thank you for all you do!

This was very helpful, thanks for doing this experiment!

I'm so glad I caught this I've been going nuts trying to figure out what to do with my cheap but super pigmented new paints! I didn't want to toss them, I tried honey, but they definitely need a bit more. Off to the pharmacy!

This was great. I'm new to watercolor. This helps a lot.

fantastic video i use gum arabic to thicken an extend my paints aquapasto as well

You need more subscribers, so here I am. I've been binge-watcing your Color Spotlight series :)

Very interesting, thanks for the demo.

This is such a helpful video! Thanks a lot.

It sounds interesting especially the honey one

a great video as always. I did want to add the sennelier also has a lot of honey on their paints.

Great demonstration, thank you! I am filling half pans and my white, yellow, and orange colors have cracked straight from the tube, so this was exactly what I needed to learn before I continued filling more pans.

Nicely done!

Great review! Thank you for sharing and answering my honey and glycerine questions!

This is so useful! I have been looking for a comprehensive guide on how much to use and particularly one that shows both honey and glycerine!

happy to hear we will have much more content from you :D

Thank you, this is just what I was looking for.

Awesome, I was in the middle of the same experiment. I thought honey would be the one to win for sure. Maybe I’ll try adding a little of both!

I experimented with glycerin in gouache and wondered if it would work as well in wc, so thanks for this video! With my gouache experiment, though, I added way too much--about 1 part to 3 parts paint (a LOT more than in this vid), and the resulting sketch took forever to dry. I'm talking, over a day!

Great tip, thank you.

Thank you very much for this, what I do is add the Glycerine to my water which helps to keep watercolour active longer, so it doesn't dry out so quick.

Currently trying this with my arteza colors, and my other cheaper alternatives because I want to be able to carry them with me in a tin whitout them cracking and falling out!

Very cool test! Tfs!

Very helpful video, thank you!

So very informative! Thank you! I really learned something.

Thank you for the info

Good evening from France ! (and my apologies for my english) Thanks a lot for your channel. I'm learning quite a lot. Your favorite blues / yellow and so on, and your Color Spotlights are just awesome (and also, terribly bad for the bank account of broke law student / beginner watercolorist ahah). I had a question, per any chance, did you make a list of all your discovery, wich paint need glycerin, wich do not, or wich are better straight frome the tube ? I'm about to do my first pans, i was painting off the tube until now. That would be quite a useful information. From what i understand, almost all of the primatek (all of them ?!) and the cobalt violets would benefit from one to two drop of glycerine. Any other ? Thanks in advance. Oh, and if any people interested read this, even so i believe it's the same in any country, this the time to do the french museums. There is almost nobody inside (compare to "normal" times), no hundreds of people in front of a tiny painting, even at the Louvre et so on.

Awesome work

Thank-you for this video......I had no idea that you could even do this to watercolor paints without effecting the light fastness and the other qualities of the watercolor. Thank-You....

I'm so glad you compared the two additives. I had wondered if one worked better then the other and about how much to use. I noticed that the Daniel Smith Primateks dry very hard and are not easy to rewet so I'll use glycerin with them when I add them to my pallet. Thank you so much for sharing such useful info.

You can add gum arabic as well as a binder combined with honey.

I started with a set of mission gold tube paints but I have now after about a year, moving away from most of them because of the potential for a shiny surface if I get the paint a little too thick. I wonder if adding glycerin to a honey paint like mission gold would get rid of the shine? Thank you! I always love your videos as they are so interesting! Admittedly I sometimes speed up the longer ones only because time is precious. 💕

Very interesting! Any info on how they affect lifting colors off the paper?☀️

This is such an odd coincidence! I had just decided to make my own watercolour cakes from tube paint and I was wondering if it would be best to add honey or glycerine to them! Thank you so much! Very simple to follow yet informative video as usual! 💖

Thanks for the Experiment. I wonder how would they compare with each other wet on wet. Which one would flow and move better?

Thanks for this interesting video. Since with glycerin it wets nicer, how about it lifting and glazing properties? Did you notice any noticable differences? Did you have to change the way you handle the glycerin mixture paint in comparisson to you colors that don't have added glycerin?

Really love your tires! Thanks😚

Thanks for the video, it was really helpful. A little question. Do you think I can do the same with gouache?

Could you do a tutorial on how to set up and use your skin tone palette? It would be really helpful. :) ty

If anyone wants to be accurate, I recommend a 50 gram scale. They measure down to I think .01 or .001 grams, which is VERY light. They're cheap on Amazon.

will use glycerine. Thanks for all the info.

I add a bit of both when I make my own paints. I think (and have seen) paints get shiny with too much gum arabic, but not with glycerin. Then again, maybe I never went far enough XD Great video, thank you!

It's much easier to mix paint in a pan. Fill no more than 3/4 full so there is room to mix. It keeps it contained, it's easy to scrape against the sides, and no waste. You can then keep the pan or transfer it to a well. If your experiment fails, just rinse it out. I would have loved to have seen more tests... how does it move wet in wet? How does it lift? What happens with both honey and glycerine.. they do two different things.

Hmm very interesting, never would have thought of adding honey to my watercolors 🤔

Really interesting video. I do have a few colors that cracked so next time I'm going to try some honey. Not sure if glycerine can be found in pharmacy here in France but I will ask. Thank you :)

Just ordered some glycerin. Glad I found this or I’d use too much. I want to try it on gouache which dries like rock. Even m graham.

perfect,! we had a conversation about this regarding the Daniel smith paints because they can dry as hard as a rock ,I agree the glycerin looks like it re wets the best, now I'll try with the glycerin with my few tubes of DS paints then maybe then I may buy more thankyou very much! Heather

Thank you for this! I’m very new to paints so this is incredibly helpful. Will this work the same with designers gouache?

I've been subscribed/ following for quite some time but had never seen this video so it popped up on my feed and decided to have a look. I was curious on whether any paints have a combination of glycerine and honey or if they aren't a good combination to mix. If you have covered this before and I've overlooked it please could you link me to the video.

I picked up an empty dropper bottle from my local Chemist/Pharmacy, it's only about 10ml and decanted some glycerol into it about 4 years ago and it's still going. I find not all paints need it, it varies by manufacturer and by pigment - Some colours just go rock hard when dry and really difficult to wet. To those colours I generally add 1 - 2 drops of glycerine depending on the pan size i.e. half / full pan or open well. Using a dropper or pipette, gives you some consistency. In time you will find some colours may require less or more to achieve the same the same re-wetting ability. I have never tried Honey but I imagine you would need a fair bit more than you were using. Over the years I have tried to avoid using it by either finding alternative brands or keeping a particular colour in the tube until needed and just putting a blob out as required .

I just was looking at a thing of glycerin in the pharmacy aisle at walmart and it was only 3 bucks- but i wasnt sure if it was the right now- Ill grab it tonight- great video!

how do the different paint formulations respond to lifting?

Do you think this would work with watercolors that smear when then they dry? I got some free no label pans and they spread pigment when dry.

This is a good experiment too but i usually used to add liquid glue to the water paints. This make my paints a good thick texture and it helps to make my paints dry very fast than usual time-lapse. The only thing to keep in mind is that we have to add color while we mix the paint with water at the same time add liquid glue to make desired consistency or thickness and then paint on canvas.. this would come easy to get thicker paint strokes..

thank you - this has really helped - I'm looking to get the Arteza big box and I've heard they don't dry well on their own.

hi Denise! i have bought some cotman, grumbacher and van gogh tubes and i will be filling that paint into half pans, how much glycerin do i add?, btw i love your channel!! i don't miss any video

Could honey and glycerin help gouache to not dry so fast to give extra mixing /blending time on the paper?

Wow, thank you for this. 👌

Can we use both at the same time

I got little packs of honey and I wanted to try it with watercolor. I don’t know people actually did this.cool

Does it affect transparency?

How can I add honey or glycerin into my watercolors? They are not in a tube and they are very chalky so I wanted to try....

Thanks for your video! I've a question for you, maybe someone from the comments may help as well: i'd like to buy some watercolours tubes from amazon (student quality) and ideally put them in some half pans to carry around, but from the reviews this specific brand dries very badly and tends to crack easily; would you add glycerin/honey to make it permanently uncrackable or should i look for some other options? Thanks in advance

??? Confused here. Did you mix these directly into your tube paints, and if so, how much of each; or did you mix into your water, and if so how much? Also, on your ox gall video, it would have been nice to see how they looked if you charged a second layer on each ox gall swipe. Thanks for the video!

Wow

2 Questions: 1. Is it okay to mix honey and glycerin to the watercolor paints? Or only either or (and why?)) 2. You did a flesh pan! How did you go about finding an affordable way of making one?

Sennelier water colors are made with honey and available through Blick.

Is it possible to mix with gouache to stop it from cracking. Cause I would like to have a gouache in pans. I tried to make gouache pallet once but once it dried the colours cracked and went all over the place. Please any suggestions!!

Eek! Wish I had seen this before I added waaay too much glycerine to a couple colors yesterday. Oops! Now I’ll know better next time. Thankfully I only put 2 colors of a cheaper paint onto the palette. I think they’ll still dry eventually, but they’re taking much longer than the other colors. I added a “drop” about the size of a dried lentil to about 1/2-3/4 tsp paint. Interestingly, one of the colors still severely cracked.

This is awesome. I was originally investigating how to rewet my colors to put them in a new container, because I made them with too much gum arabic, and so they all cracked. I didnt think I needed honey or glycerin, I didnt realize it wasnt optional! haha. Do you have any suggestions as to how to melt back down cracked watercolor, so that I can add the glycerin drops or honey, without completely watering them down? Or do you have some trick that may be helpful anyone? I have a ton of paint now that I mixed, like 36 colors, 6 full pans of each, and I really dont want to waste them because I mixed some of them with Daniel Smith.....hahaha Any suggestions would be sooo nice! I am truly a beginner at this.

Hey ho...do you have any longterm experiences? I just thought about mixing some of the Daniel Smiths colours, especially some of the primateks (some dry hard as a rock), with glycerin...hoped than they will be easier to rewet this way...what do you think?

I'm going to try this for my Potters Pink! Thanks :)

If you use m graham and sennelier paints they don't dry out. Their binder is honey so they are always ready to go and they don't run.

What honey do you use?

My problems are my watercolour dry super chalky and granulated like crazy! And when it stored away for a while, some of the pigments just rubbing against other pages. Does this helps?

Hi Denise, can honey and glycerin be added to gouache paints? I have a Winsor & Newton Designer Gouache and they all crack when dry.

I just found your channel and your very helpful watercolor tutorials! I was glad to hear of all you have planned, don't go too fast, I have to get my notebook out to take notes, and see what I have already missed! I have a question concerning honey. I have a mission gold pallete set up that I use occasionally but not regularly and I noticed some cracking of some colors. Will adding honey make the colors mold over time? I also heard if you add glycerin to your water instead of your paints it is helpful? Any information on that?

So if you have paints that are already honey-based, would you ever add more honey or glycerin to them?

Iv come to realize i absolutely adore working with honey based watercolors, but never tried glycerin base so i’m not sure now lol.

Do you believe that adding glycerin prolongs the durability of water color for a longer period of time in front of exposed light?

I have some watercolors from school that are just horrible, they are Faber-Castell, I am thinking about molling the pans and then adding ox gall and glicerin/honey and let they dry again while waiting my new Paul Rubens Artists Watercolors arrive from China, wich will take 2 to 3 months. The major problems I have with those Faber-Castell aside from chalkiness, ligtfastness and brightness are rewetting and flow. Maybe this solves the problem.

Does it do anything to the paint's quality if it cracked? Uhmm will it be hard to rewet?

Do you know if this also works with gouache? Or will it ruin the paint? I'd love to set up a gouache palette to carry arround but I never did because of the cracking.

Will glycerin stop paints from molding. If not, what stop mold?

How many times can you add glycerine to your watercolors? Is it only once or a couple of times while you are using it? Sorry I can't find anything regarding that. Any advice?

Do you have to worry about the honey degrading or attracting ants?

I need to try this because gouache drying on my plate while I'm painting and it's so frustrating.

Hello! This is very helpful, I wonder if the glycerin can relive old watercolors in a pan form... I relive them with water and letting rest for a hour to use them, but if I add glycerin or honey will be different?

A 50/50 honey glycerin combo would've been interesting to try :) Also I have about 24 winsor and newton colors. I've heard these can dry very hard. I assume adding some glycerin to the tube paints would be good? I may try this. Just nervous about ruining expensive paints

Just curious...does it matter what kind of honey to use?

Do watercolors shrink when they dry???

I wonder how it would turn out with a 2mm drop of glycerin and a 2mm drop of honey? Or two drops each? That's how I measured your drops btw. It looked close to 1-2mm in size. :). This was fun to watch! And sorry for all the edits my mind is running too fast, I need to sit down and paint. :)