I've been painting less than 12 months, using student grade heavy bodied paints but always hearing great things about Golden so I used some Christmas money to try it out. To say I'm impressed would be an understatement. While the consistency was very similar to the cheaper paints I had been using, the Golden simply goes much further on the canvas, and much more easily. Other brands in Australia seem to have limited blacks in their palettes and I was really impressed that the Mars Black was less overpowering than some others which resulted in much less wastage from mixing too much