Review: Schmincke Liquid Earth and Liquid Charcoal

Not a sponsored review

Schmincke had released the Liquid Earth and Liquid Charcoal watercolour back in 2024. I'm not sure why these weren't released under the Horadam Aquarell product line though since these are... Just watercolour.

And they are packaged individually. This is probably some marketing thing to me.

• A neutral peach stone black - 18 757, PBk8
• A warm, brownish cherry pit black - 18 756, PBk 8
• A cool, bluish grape seed black – 18 755, PBk 8
• Liquid chalk – 18 850, PW18
• Liquid sanguine – 18 854, PR102
• Liquid umber – 18 852, PY43

I only purchased the three colours which I think I'll use more often and they are Peach Stone Black PBk8, Liquid Sanguine PR102 and Liquid Umber PY43.

Since these are earth colours, they aren't that expensive, and they will have excellent lightfast quality.

These are the colour swatches and they look alright.

Liquid Umber looks slightly desaturated to me but that's just how it is. I would have preferred a more vibrant earth like Yellow Ochre. This can mix with Liquid Sanguine to create beautiful skin tone colours.

Liquid Sanguine looked kinda like Schmincke Transparent Sienna or Burnt Sienna. This can mix with Ultramarine to give you a warm-ish grey.

I was expecting Peach Stone Black to have more granulation but it's kinda flat, when compared to the more dramatic Winsor & Newton Liquid Indian Ink with absolutely dramatic granulation.

Here's a sketch painted with those three colours and Ultramarine.

These are earth colours so the tinting strength isn't that strong compared to colours such as Phthalo, Quinacridone. It is difficult to mix dark colours.

Using Peach Stone Black to paint black or darker areas does not look as good compared to mixing blacks yourself.

These are good quality paint but nothing out of the ordinary, so I'm not sure why they have special marketing. They could have released together under Schmincke Horadam Aquarell.