Like you I find the ugly part of the painting very hard to work through and it is so nice to know that someone who is so much better at a medium than I am also struggles with that. Sometimes in the ugly stage I get stuck and don't know where to of from where I am. You have inspired me to push on anyway!
It's a struggle I didn't know existed as 'the ugly stage' until I stumbled upon other artists that talked about it, and it really changed my mindset towards approaching a painting. So I love sharing my own experience on overcoming the ugly stage too now, in hopes that I can help someone else get over it or at least realise it exists! thank you for sharing too, and I hope you'll push through it :)
I would love to see a sketchbook series! Thank you for the video. I just got a set and have been having a difficult time finding information on how to actually paint with them! Thank you for sharing your beautiful painting!
Looks great! Another good place to buy poster colors (or any Japan-related art supplies) is directly from Amazon Japan. I'm in the US, but I have to imagine they have a lot of buyers in Australia as well. You can switch the site language to English too (although be aware of the weird auto-translation of item names.. lol)! Back in 2019, I bought a Nicker 24 count set of the 40mL jars for around 7500 yen (~$65 USD), plus about $25 in shipping via DHL. I buy stuff from there all the time, and it's typically delivered from Japan to east coast of the US in about 2 to 3 days. Cheers!
Nicker poster paints are ridiculously cheap in Japan. A 40ml tub is only about 2 USD each. Colors like Opera are not lightfast as is with every medium the BV10 dye is used with. However, a lot of the Nicker colors are extremely lightfast so you will be rewarded for spending some time paying attention to the lightfastness ratings.
Looking forward to more Ghibli style paintings! It's difficult to find landscape paintings without dark shadows, so I really like the style. Very refreshing.
wow thank you for this, it really helped!! ive been trying to find out more about nicker poster colours because of their reputation, but it was really hard to find out what I was looking for :c. this review and the demo really cleared up anything I was unsure about, thank youuuuu 💕
aw you're so welcome! so glad it is helpful to you, i definitely had a lot of questions about nicker paints too so i'm glad i could answer some that you had. hope you'll give them a go because i really do love using them! 🥰
I just found your channel today - and I’m so happy I did! I really enjoy your videos, especially the Studio Ghibli studies (: Your art is so stunning, it really looks like a true Ghibli background!
I guess with it being a local Japanese brand and there being a lot of colours, it was easier for ghibli and other studios to order the quantity of paints that is needed for a big anime production and make sure the colours are consistent through the whole movie. they also seem to dry faster than other gouache from what I have seen online, which is very important for the time constraint in anime production.
Yes! I'd love to follow your work. I'm wondering if it's possible to put a small amount of high quality guache or watercolor from a tube into a bit of poster paint from a jar because I saw a tutorial in clouds with poster paint but don't own any yet. I heard white us quite useful. I guess I should just fork over the cash and buy it all. Your work is just gorgeous.. thanks!
This might not apply to poster paint but if you’re getting a lot of the binder when squeezing it out, they might need a bit of a shake, they’ve probably been sitting a long time, I could be wrong though I’ve only tried this with acrylic.
I was looking for Nicker poster colours on Google and the picture of your video thumbnail brought me here. Lovely study piece!! Also thank you so much for all the information you shared. I did some research myself and found that buying them from Japan would be way cheaper, also buying them separately is less expensive than buying them as a set 🤔 but they don’t ship to my country 🥲 so I have to keep looking. I wanted to ask you what you are using to film? A tripod or? Is there anything you’d recommend. I want to record my process, but am having difficulties finding a good tripod.
Thank you! After using them for a while, I still feel like Nicker poster colours isn't a huge difference from gouache (at least that's how I feel when I use them). I'm using a tripod to film. I can't remember the exact brand, but also I wouldn't recommend the one I have for overhead filming. I would suggest finding a tripod that allows you to do overhead shots easily!
Great video - loving the Ghibli vibe! I find that poster color, when ever so slightly diluted with water, is not as opaque or bright as my Holbein or W/N gouache (although that slightly depends on the colour). I actually didn’t find that the Nicker binder separated for me as you did earlier - have you tried shaking the tube a bit, or pressing around the paint in the tube? That might help! Overall, I like poster paint for backgrounds and using gouache on top for slightly more detailed work. Cheers!
thank you so much! 🥰very interesting, I also haven't noticed it being any more opaque than gouache. oh yes i'll definitely give that a go, i tried putting them upside down to see if the binder would move up the tube and away from the opening. and i haven't yet tried combining the two but i'd love to experiment and see what happens. thank you for sharing!! ❤️
@@JessChungArt I had a similar experience but with Lefranc & Burgeois gouache I bought almost 10 years ago. It would also get shiny and sticky and hard to use once dried. I bought them as an alternative for poster colours.
I think that the paint that comes from a tiny tube is not exactly the same that comes in the regular pot used by Ghibli... It could explain why you had that feeling of a not so opaque gouache-like poster color.
Beautiful video and loved your painting! I think you’re really great at editing and painting and have a fantastic aesthetic! A few questions/clarifications though. I don’t mean these to criticize because I really am a fan. These are purely to inform and/or ask genuine questions. - “Poster colors tend to get muddier” - I thought that was mainly just the cheap poster paints that everyone thinks of when they hear poster paints, not the Nicker ones? - “They use more pigments compared to gouache” - I’ve seen tons of Winsor and Newton gouache colors with 3 pigments (e.g., brilliant green, gold ochre). I did a quick browse and saw that almost every Nicker color is 1-2 pigments only. At best, I’d say they’re similar or equal in terms of number of pigments? - You said you didn’t have to mix these as much as gouache because “they came in a lot of vibrant colors”. I don’t think that’s necessarily a fair statement to make about poster paints vs. gouache given you bought 3x the number of poster colors as you have for gouache. It’s a result of the number of colors you have, no? - Lightfast is a measure of how permanent the paints are, not a general measure of quality. Gouache is actually not that lightfast, especially designers gouache (vs. artists gouache), which is what winsor and newton is. There are several W&N colors that are fugitive (i.e., not permanent). So I would think poster paints and gouache are fairly similar in that regard? Maybe poster colors have more colors that are fugitive. - I was under the impression poster colors (including Nicker) are actually less opaque than gouache, not more? They looked less opaque based on the video. My general takeaway is that poster colors are very similar to gouache in consistency, look, feel, and vibrancy, but they are less opaque and less expensive.
Hello :) thank you for taking the time to give feedback. Your points are very valid and definitely got me thinking about what I said! I do admit I didn’t do thorough research into nicker poster paints specifically, so in the video I was talking more broadly about the qualities of poster colour paints that I had learned about while doing my own research into the medium. I had a look at the lightfastness rating of nicker paints and many are completely or at least partially lightfast, so that’s a good sign. It makes sense that nicker are very high quality poster colour paints considering they are used by Japanese animation studios like studio ghibli. That’s also one of the reasons why I was quite set on getting this specific brand and willing to pay a decent price for them. In terms of opaqueness, I believe the pigments in poster colours are slightly larger than gouache, hence they are a bit more opaque. But having said that, I personally haven’t noticed a difference in opaqueness between the two so far. Overall I love these poster colour paints and I hope I haven’t said anything that has completely put someone off from trying it, because they really are a joy to work with. Your comment lead me to do some more research into the topic too, so I appreciate it!
Great over view. Importing these to the U.S cost as much as a lot of artist quality gouache does, pretty brutal. Doesn't seem like there's a western manufactured equivalent to "poster colors", either.
Thank you, I love that quality too! lightfastness is how resistant the paint is to fading when exposed to light e.g. whether the artwork will discolour/lighten over a long time (usually years). definitely will be doing more studio ghibli studies with my poster colours 😍
If I remeber correctly, Poster Colour Doesnt reactivate with water as soon as it has dried on the paper. So you have to finish your picture in one go if you using blending techniques. With Gouache you come back later and rehydriate the Paper on a Damp Cloth. Thats why Poster colour is good for the first underpainting. So it doesnt blend with your colours you apply on top when the under painting has dried :)
Poster colour and gouache is almost the same so choose whichever one if more accessible to you. Acrylic is quite different from the two, so it depends on what you like!
