My vacation has ended in an unexpected yet somewhat expected manner. Our little dog, Flash, who was simultaneously the best and worst dog ever*, passed away. He was somewhere between 16 and 20 years old and I’d always suspected that he was older than the minimum age the rescue had suggested. Anyway, the last time we took him to the vet, the vet suggested we’d have less than a year. We got 6 months. He got really sick while we were away on vacation. When we got home we took him to the vet ER and it wasn’t great. He passed that night.
Anyway, grief is a funny thing and I process it through repetitive tasks. I sat down with all my art kits and materials to do a lightfastness test. I used to do lightfastness testing on most of my materials when I did reviews. This started out with fountain pen inks and evolved. My old blog had years of testing and data.
A lightfastness test is pretty simple, medium effort and a lot of waiting.
Things you need
- paper
- ruler
- pencil
- materials to be tested
- tape
- scissors
- window that gets direct light for a lot of the day
This is how I conduct my lightfastness tests. I measure out 1 inch wide rows onto a sheet of paper. The width varies but I usually look to do at least 2 inches. I label each row with the material in pencil. Pencil will not fade in sunlight, it is one of the most archival materials available. I then swatch the materials.
After the material dry I cut the paper in half, so that each row is split. These strips of paper are them taped to a window that gets at least half a day of direct light. South facing is best, but work with what you have. The other half of the paper is stashed away for comparison.
I haven’t done a lightfastness test in a long while. There are a number of youtubers that do them and it doesn’t always feel necessary to do my own testing, but I have a few new products that I’ve never seen tested with some bold claims.
I decided to break my tests up with the kit the material is in. So my red and green en plein air kit, the pochade box, and so on. However some things- like the SeamiArt and Arrtx sets are tested as a group on their own. I also tested my gouache palette.
I won’t have any results for at least a month, and the real results won’t be done until October. I usually test for 3 months and then put the test strips up for another 3 months. I am VERY interested in the results for the student grade kits and the Arrtx lightfastness claims are pretty phenomenal for the price and I suspect only partially truthful.
The window in the spare bedroom is absolutely covered in little strips of paper. I have more things I want to test- those watersoluble colored charcoals I picked up from AliExpress, the Derwent Inktense watercolor set I have, and the Meiliang watercolors I picked up a few years ago and loved.
I’ll check them when the test is a month in and again at 2 and 3 months. The month will give a good indication if extreme fugitive colors while 2 and 3 months and again 6 months will tell us if a color is very lightfast or not.
*Seriously, he bit two lawyers on 2 different occasions but then cuddled with one of them.