When HIMI landed with us back in February, the sets that sold fastest were the small ones — the palettes you can drop in a bag and open flat on a café table. HIMI has clearly noticed the same thing, because the newest additions to the range take that compact format and give it a sharper focus: seven twin cup sets, each with twelve colours chosen for one particular kind of painting.
That focus is the appeal. A general-purpose palette asks you to mix your way to the colours a subject needs; a themed one hands them to you and lets you get on with painting. For sketchbook work especially, that speed matters.
The seven palettes
- Lovely Portrait (Peach Case) — warm skin tones and soft neutrals for figure and character work, covering fair through deep complexions.
- Sunny Seaside (Green Case) — sea blues, aqua greens, sand and shell tones for coastal scenes and summer pages.
- Fresh Botanic (Pink Case) — leaf greens from spring-bright to deep foliage, with petal pinks for florals.
- Nature Landscape (Apple Green Case) — earth tones, foliage greens and sky blues; a natural plein air companion.
- Soft Pastel (Purple Case) — powdery pinks, lilacs, mints and creams that stay chalky and light even over darker grounds.
- Super Vibrant (Yellow Case) — high-saturation brights that hold their intensity, for poster-style work where colour carries the piece.
- Very Basic (Ice Blue Case) — primaries, secondaries, black and white; the sensible first set, and a tidy travel palette for anyone.
Same format, same habits
These behave exactly like the rest of the twin cup range: two 12ml cups per slot, individually sealed, pre-softened and workable straight from the case. The paint is opaque and matte, layers cleanly, and re-wets with a drop of water if a cup starts to skin over. If you already keep a bigger HIMI set at home, the themed twelves make an easy second palette for working out and about.
If you're choosing a first set, start with Very Basic — everything in it mixes cleanly into everything else, so it teaches colour mixing rather than replacing it. The themed palettes then slot in wherever your sketchbook tends to wander.
All seven are in the shop in Belfast now, and online in our HIMI collection.
