18 half pans

Eighteen Koi half pan watercolours, formulated to blend easily so you can mix well beyond the eighteen you start with.

Water brush

A refillable Koi water brush with a 9ml reservoir barrel and a detachable medium tip. Fill it once and paint without a water jar.

Easel lid

The lid snaps open and holds postcard sized paper upright, so the box becomes its own little easel on a park bench.

Pegged palette

A detachable mixing palette that pegs onto the base at the right, the left or the centre, so it works left or right handed.

Two sponges

Two dabbing sponges sit in the base for controlling how much water is in the brush before it touches the paper.

Pull-down ring

A ring on the underside folds out so you can hold the whole kit in one hand and paint with the other, standing up.

The eighteen half pans are Chinese White, Lemon Yellow, Permanent Yellow Deep, Jaune Brilliant, Vermilion Hue, Crimson Lake, Purple, Cobalt Blue Hue, Cerulean Blue, Ultramarine, Prussian Blue, Yellow Green, Viridian Hue, Permanent Green Deep, Yellow Ochre, Light Red, Burnt Umber and Ivory Black. It is a deliberately balanced spread: a warm and a cool of each primary, three greens, three earths, plus a white and a black, which is enough to mix almost anything you meet outdoors.

Yes. A Koi water brush is in the box, with a 9ml refillable reservoir barrel and a detachable medium tip. You squeeze the barrel to feed water into the bristles, which means no water jar, no spills in a bag and no hunting for a tap. The barrel also stores your water while the kit is packed away.

Only paper. The box supplies the colours, the brush, the water carrier, the mixing palette and the sponges, and the lid props your paper up. A pad of watercolour paper and this box is a complete kit you can put in a jacket pocket.

Koi sits in the bracket most people call student or mid grade. It is a matte Japanese watercolour built for sketching, journaling and learning rather than for archival exhibition work. The trade off is deliberate: it rewets instantly, it blends easily, it is forgiving when you are learning, and it invites you to use paint heavily rather than ration it, which is exactly what learning needs.

Touch a wet brush to the pan and the colour lifts straight away. Koi is formulated to rewet quickly, which matters a lot outdoors where you do not want to scrub at a hard pan while the light changes. Let the pans dry with the lid open before you close the box, so the colours do not print onto the lid.

Yes. The pans lift out of the tray, so you can replace a colour you use heavily, swap in a different one, or refill an empty pan from a tube. This is one of the practical advantages of a pan set over a moulded palette.

The Koi pocket boxes run from 12 colours up to 48. The 12 is the true minimum for pocket carry. The 18 adds the greens and earths that make landscape and street sketching much easier without mixing every one from scratch. The 24 and above start adding convenience colours and a larger footprint. If you sketch outdoors and want one box that covers most subjects, the 18 is the sensible middle.

It is one of the better beginner sets, for a reason that has nothing to do with the paint: everything is in one box and nothing leaks. Beginners give up on watercolour because of logistics as often as technique. Take away the water jar, the loose brushes and the separate palette, and you will actually paint.

That depends on the paper, not the paint. Watercolour needs paper built for water, ideally 200gsm or heavier, and properly 300gsm for wet work. A standard sketchbook page will cockle and may bleed through. Look at a watercolour pad or a mixed media pad if you plan to work wet.

Yes. The mixing palette is pegged and detachable, and it mounts on the right, the left or the centre of the base, so you can set the kit up whichever way round suits you.

Sakura Color Products Corporation of Osaka, Japan, the company behind Pigma Micron fineliners and Gelly Roll gel pens. Koi is their watercolour line, sold internationally through Royal Talens.

Art Shed stocks the Koi range online and ships Australia wide from our own warehouses, and you can buy over the counter at our Moorabbin store in Melbourne, or our West End store in Brisbane. Art Shed is an Australian owned art supplies retailer selling genuine stock through the Australian distributor, not grey imports. We also ship to New Zealand.

Orders placed before 11am AEST on a business day are dispatched the same day outside sale periods. Express Post is generally 1 to 2 business days to metropolitan Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, the ACT and Tasmania, and 2 to 3 business days to Western Australia, the Northern Territory and regional areas. Standard Post is generally 2 to 5 and 6 to 8 business days respectively. Every order is tracked, and Click and Collect from our Moorabbin store is usually ready within 1 to 3 business days.