hi welcome back to another art history video
in the past i've worked with 120 year old colored pencils 90 year old crayola crayons
those uh colored pencils from the 1930s and today my friends i am coming at you
with probably what is the most exciting thing i've ever purchased a 100 year old watercolor palette
now besides like the victorian era colored pencils i think this is probably the oldest
thing that i've ever worked with unlike the colored pencils unlike the crayons
watercolor is a lot more unstable just because it has a lot more fluid in it
and even more concerning as you're about to see out of all the historical things
that i've worked with by far this poor guy is in absolute terrible condition
you know what i mean so today i'm gonna try my best to make some swatches out of it see how well
it works see how badly damaged it truly is and most importantly if i am still able to get you
know some like color out of it i plan to make a painting with it now in the past people have
absolutely came for me whenever i filmed these videos the number one concern of these antique
historical videos is how could you use this super rare one-of-a-kind memorabilia this
belongs in a museum not in your hands you know totally understandable stuff but as always with
these antique videos the art supplies that i'm using today they're just old they're
not rare and they're not worth anybody with shipping it only cost me 26 bucks
if you haven't subscribed with notifications i highly recommend that you do that because
it helps me more than you will ever know now in order for you to fully
understand what you're about to see here is an extremely brief history on devoe watercolors
now the company started back all the way in 1754 when a man named william post started selling
paint by the east river in new york city fast forward over 100 years later the company went
through all different types of business owners family members names and eventually it was
co-owned by two businessmen named charles reynolds and frederick devoe it ended up
becoming an absolute beast of an art supply company they were one of if not the biggest
artist supply paint company i mean at this factory they were pumping art supplies out which is why
the art supply that i'm about to show you today is not rare whatsoever and eventually this company
comes to an end when over time they switched from making art supplies for artists and they
switched over to making paint for construction and they were sold to a company that's still around
today called celanese for a whopping 60 million dollars and this brings us to modern day where i
in 2021 have one of their watercolor palettes from when they were at their absolute peak
it's a random piece of tape..
let me get gloves because i don't know if there's like lead or anything in this
so i need to be really careful so i will be right back with some gloves
oh my gosh i'm so excited
now the first thing i want to say is i don't really appreciate the fact that they use like a
stereotyped native american to sell their product i don't think that's right even though this was
a hundred years ago and the company no longer exists it doesn't make it any less tacky and
embarrassing honestly but the reason that i do want to take a second and acknowledge this is
because it is history and two i just want to have a platform to say that this crap don't fly anymore
so yeah usually i like to make googly eyes of the packaging and tell you how cool it is but in this
case it's gonna it's gonna be a no for me dawg i'm like mad now like looking at this is making me mad
and it should make you mad too like what the hell why would you do okay anyway
we're okay we need to move on originally this packaging was actually like a vibrant
bright green and over time it faded to this really dark green that you're seeing here
so that's really really interesting all right let's open this up oh boy
wow this paint has oh it came with the original paintbrush i mean given there's no hair on it but
still it's the original paintbrush that's cool wow this is absolutely fascinating and to be
honest with you i can't even tell what the colors originally were which i'll try to guess without
swatching them it looks like we got crimson brown yellow ochre sap green carbon black burnt sienna
some kind of blue and i think originally this one even though it doesn't look like it i think
this originally was a violet wow but yeah they are absolutely rusted over to the gods
i mean whoever previously owned this showed this little guy lots of love oh is that mold oh brother
there's mold there's mold i think that's mold oh my god what the i might need like a freakin'
tetanus shot after this now as bad and beat up as each individual pan is when you turn it around
it's actually in really really good condition might i say perfect condition now something that
you don't see at all anymore is that this little piece that holds all the watercolor
this little guy right here it's made out of metal instead of traditionally what you see now plastic
and if you notice it has three little divots where you can mix the paint
add some water mix the paint add some water wow now normally i would say like let's go
ahead and jump straight into uh the swatches and see what the colors are but this paint
is so beat up i think i need to clean it up a little bit before i could even start to use it
*music*
so i finished cleaning it up and before i show you the after let me show you the before and here is
the after it's looking so much better especially this brown right here at one point it was so
rusted i literally had to scrape away the rust because it was like fused together with a palette
and if you look closely you can see where the pigment is separating from the gum arabic
it looks kind of like two different colors so i'm a little i'm a little concerned about that too
let's swatch this bad boy out and see what a 1920s color palette would look like
okay here we go the first one is a dark
brown okay so my very first impression and i might be running my mouth too soon i mean this
is literally just the first swatch basically but um it's not very pigmented like not for what i'm
used to usually watercolor is super pigmented and all you need is just like a little drop
and you can get it to like be almost black you know and this is almost transparent this one
looks like it's gonna be a black uh the black is a little transparent as well which again i'm
not really used to in fact let me go show you what a modern day watercolor black looks like
all right so we got the 1920s watercolor and then we got a modern day watercolor
do you see how drastically different the saturation is it's absolutely nuts
and here's what a brown looks like
but to be fair it could be a variety of things like for example some of these pigments might
be natural pigments or like maybe very early versions of synthetic pigments so maybe they
didn't have like that same saturation or it could just be time you know over the course of a literal
hundred years we're lucky to even have this kind of pigment coming out you know what i mean
okay we'll go in with the brown and this one was the really really rusted one
i bet you anything this one is probably a natural pigment which is probably why it
uh rusted so quickly is because all the metals inside it you know this one kind of reminds me
of mummy brown which if you don't know is a color literally made from mummies
i mean surely it's not made from mummies right? we'll try out the
purple oh my this color is absolutely stunning oh my okay we'll try green
what an interesting green color it looks distinctly different than like a synthetic pigment
it looks kind of like a natural earthy pigment really beautiful next up will be the yellow
if i can get any out this yellow might be done for
i thought this was yellow ochre but this one is not yellow at all i mean a little bit but i mean
it's not it's like brown whoa that's so weird next up will be the red color and to be quite honest
with you i'm not too sure if we'll be able to get any since it's kind of like empty but we'll try
and lastly we'll try out the blue
i mean these colors are absolutely stunning they're kind of muted they're kind of bright
and these colors are just so toned down for watercolor compared to what i'm used to in 2021
version in fact let me just do some 2020 swatches that way you guys can see what i'm talking about
all right so what i'm about to show you is important that i show you this because the
colors on this side are obviously from a modern day watercolor palette and as you're about to
see they look almost comical like they look like a children's tv show or something um where do i even
begin it kind of seems like the colors back then seemed a little bit more sophisticated you know a
little bit more close to their natural pigment counterpart so anyway now that i know what the
swatches look like i know what i'm working with i know that these actually work and they clean
up kind of nice i've waited long enough to start the drawing i mean painting process
i'm gonna draw this photo because i think it goes with the time and plus i think it's really cool
okay so unflattering angle time so i've pretty much finished the drawing at this point i will
show you that now and as far as the watercolor goes it works exactly like regular watercolor
does in modern day except for two distinct things that i've noticed the first thing is the water
if you look inside of it you can see all kinds of particles that have fallen to the bottom which is
something i'm not really used to with modern day watercolor the second weird thing is that while i
was painting with this i kept getting this weird strong whiff of pure iron so take that with what
you will and the very last distinct thing that i noticed was the yellow oh it's kind of green it's
kind of brown it has a perfect yellow neutral natural undertone so incredibly beautiful and
the closest thing i could find was a deep yellow by peerless watercolor paper but yeah other than
that this watercolor was definitely an experience i'm really glad that i got to mess around with it
and i hope you guys enjoyed it as well i'll leave my historical playlist down in the description box
below if you like historical videos subscribe and yeah with that being said guys thank you so
much again for watching i hope you guys have a wonderful day and i will see you next video bye