Art Supplies Spotlight: Poems About You Handmade Watercolour Part I

In this month’s post, I’m excited to share a little about Poems About You, a small art business based in Washington and run by Lena — a one-woman show who creates handmade watercolour paints. Lena’s shop offers over 200 colours of handmade watercolours available as single pans, curated sets, sketchbooks, posters, tins, and even bioplastic half pans. What makes her work stand out is her commitment to "combining art history, science, and research to create professional-grade watercolours using pure single pigments and high-quality organic ingredients."

I first heard about Poems About You through glowing reviews from fellow artists and naturally became curious to try them myself. What especially drew me in is Lena’s focus on single-pigment watercolours. These paints are known for their purity, vibrancy, and clean mixing qualities — a dream for anyone working with botanical art, traditional watercolour techniques, or delicate layering and glazing. Single-pigment paints help minimize muddiness, giving you more control and confidence when mixing. That said, the website also offers a selection of convenience colours—mostly greens, blues, and neutrals—for added versatility.

You can purchase Poems About You handmade watercolours directly from the website or on Etsy. They come in a variety of sizes, including sample metal pans, quarter pans, mini pans, half pans, full pans, and, more recently, tubes. Half pans range from $13 AUD to $36 AUD, with the higher price points reflecting rare mineral-based pigments such as Azurite, Chrysolite, Malachite, Vivianite, and Lapis Lazuli, which are generally more expensive than standard pigments.

For those interested in historical pigments, the shop also offers some toxic traditional paints, including Cinnabar (formerly known as Vermilion, as it contains mercury), Lead-Tin Yellow, and Lead-Tin White.

For those looking to build a collection of Poems About You handmade watercolours, there are several larger sets available at a lower cost than purchasing individual pans.

Poems About You Large Universal Set - 48 Colour Set

Poems About You Large Universal Watercolour Set - 40 Colour Set

In this blog post, I will be sharing my collection of yellow, orange, red and pink colours that I own from Poems About You.

Notes On Each Colour

Several colours were somewhat difficult to rewet, highly transparent, and had a low tinting strength with a slightly gummy texture. These included Ultramarine Yellow, Ultramarine Violet, and Antique Pink. They layered beautifully but required more effort to activate from the pan.

In contrast, the rest of the colours were incredibly easy to rewet, highly pigmented, and vibrant — a little went a long way. Cadmium Yellow, Lemon Yellow, Rutile Yellow, Cadmium Red, and Cadmium Red Dark leaned towards semi-opaque to opaque, providing strong coverage, with Rutile Yellow being the most opaque. Meanwhile, Quinacridone Magenta and Indian Yellow were more transparent, making them excellent for glazing.

The paint pans themselves had no cracks or bubbles, and the overall texture of these paints is smoother and less granulating than most handmade watercolour brands, which I love for botanical artwork.

Swatches

See below for swatches of all the colours.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you so much for reading. I truly appreciate your time and interest. Stay tuned for Poems About You II, where I’ll be sharing an even wider range of colours — this time in shades of blue and purple, my absolute favourites!

I hope you enjoyed this blog post and found it inspiring.

Until next time.

Much love,

Wendy