Boku-Undo Gansai Traditional Japanese Watercolor Paints (24 Colors)

Boku-Undo Gansai Traditional Japanese Watercolor Paints in the full 24-color set covers the broad sweep of the traditional Japanese color spectrum in a single box, made in Nara by a sumi manufacturer founded in 1805. It adds the nuanced colors the smaller sets leave out: two deeper greens, a rich brown, an additional violet, a warmer yellow, and a cooler red, rounding out the traditional Japanese color spectrum. Gansai is the traditional Japanese pan watercolor format used for etegami (Japanese picture letters), color accents in sumi-e and saibokuga (colored sumi painting), and washi-based painting that needs more opacity than Western watercolor can give.

This is the most complete palette in the Boku-Undo Gansai line, intended for painters who want every color choice in one box. Etegami, sumi-e color work, botanical illustration, watercolor portraits, and ambitious sketch journals all sit comfortably within range. The pans rewet instantly when touched with a wet brush and load enough pigment to reach vivid masstones with very little water.

All 24 names are drawn from Nihon no Dentōshoku, the traditional Japanese color vocabulary that names colors after plants, minerals, and natural scenes rather than abstract hues. The pigments are bound in gum arabic and behave like modern pan watercolors, but dry to the matte, slightly chalky finish that classical Japanese painting expects, sitting on washi rather than floating like a Western glaze.

Boku-Undo has been making sumi in Nara since 1805, and the 24-color Gansai set is the broadest expression of that craft in pan form. The expanded palette gives room for nuanced color mixing without leaving the box: the neighboring greens are not redundancies but adjacent tones meant to be used together. Use it on washi for the traditional matte feel, or on standard watercolor paper for sharper edges.

For a smaller palette, see the 12-color starter set and the 18-color extended set in the same line. For a darker, sumi-grounded alternative, see the Sumi Ink Watercolor Paints — Shadow Black set. The pans pair naturally with the Akashiya Sai Water Brush Pen for travel sketching.

How to Use

1. Wet a brush with clean water.
2. Touch the brush to a pan to load color. A quick dip gives a transparent wash; pressing longer builds toward an opaque masstone.
3. Paint directly on washi or watercolor paper, or mix two pans in a separate dish for in-between tones. Two adjacent washes will bleed softly into each other.
4. Rinse the brush between colors. The pans rewet cleanly even after months of sitting closed.

Details

• Set contents: 24 dry watercolor pans in traditional Japanese colors
• Weight: 10.8 oz (307 g)
• Materials: pigments
• Origin: Made in Nara, Japan
• Brand: Boku-Undo

The Story of Boku-Undo

Founded in 1805 in Nara, a city that has produced Japanese ink for roughly thirteen hundred years, Boku-Undo has spent more than two centuries refining sumi for calligraphers, painters, and schools. The workshop still produces traditional ink sticks that are ground by hand on inkstones, but it also experiments steadily at the edges of that tradition: liquid sumi for brush painting, pan-format watercolors with sumi-grounded color, and these traditional gansai sets in the modern Japanese pan watercolor tradition.

What stays constant across every Boku-Undo product is the company's relationship with carbon and pigment. Whether it is a sumi stick, a sumi-grounded color watercolor, or a vivid gansai pan, the goal is the same: a paint that holds depth and opacity without losing the airy quality of Japanese paper. The Gansai line is Boku-Undo's continuation of that craft in the language of traditional Japanese color.