Over the past few months, I've embraced the meditative nature of watercolor painting. At first I experimented with the Yasatomo Niji Artist Watercolors Essential Set of 12 Colors and was delighted with the range of colors I could mix. I also really like the tin case that held the half pans as they could be moved around and there were 6 well areas to mix paint colors. I've also started to accumulate tubes of watercolor paint from workshop kits and/or were recommended by some of the watercolor instructors. So I set out to create my own watercolor set.
I ordered a set of two empty Metal Palette paint cases that were almost identical to the Niji set and included 40+ half pans that could be filled with watercolor paint. I watched two YouTube tutorials that provided lots of great tips for filling the half pans and creating a custom palette:
My next step was to sort my paint tubes into groupings of pinks/reds, yellows, blues, and neutral colors.
As recommended by The Devon Artist, I used a toothpick to push the paint into the corners/edges of the half pans and remove any air bubbles. I used a clean, wet brush to scoop off any remaining paint off the toothpick to create a swatch card. It was amazing to see how differently many of the colors looked from their gel form versus swatched out on watercolor paper.
This swatching step really helped me to map out the order/placement of colors within my palette. I cut out a small rectangle of watercolor to fit into my case to use as a chart of corresponding colors. After 3-4 days, the half pan paints had dried out and were ready for a second layer of paint from the tubes. This time I used a pin to push paint into corners, edges, and any cracks that may have occurred as the paints dried. Any paint left on the pin was used to fill in the corresponding box of my reference color chart.
I'm really pleased with how this first palette came together. I am even more excited by how easy it will be to adapt as my color preferences evolve. I can swap out any colors that are close in color/value and replace them with new color options. One of those empty half pans has already been filled with Payne's Gray as I wanted another neutral that would allow me to create tones.
I do love the size of this new palette, but I do have two smaller size palettes to fill. These fit into small tins that frequently hold mints/candies. I am going to hold off on filling these until I have some time to play with my new palette and figure out which colors to include in these compact palettes! These will be great for traveling, camping, etc!
Yesterday, I had a chance to play with my new watercolor palette. While there is only one green paint included my current set, I challenged myself to see how many greens I could mix to create these botanical beauties.
I just kept mixing and painting, while enjoying the meditative nature of watercolor painting...
I filled nearly 24 pages with different stems/leaves, sprouts, and wreaths, before going rogue on a few colorful pages inspired by
Wendy Solganik's (aka Willa Wanders) YouTube video demo: The Mother Method of Color Mixing for All Artists and All Paint Mediums. I am really excited by these initial pages and look forward to lots more color mixing ahead with my new custom paint palette!
And now I have plenty of cutting to do while attending meetings/presentations. Here are just a few that I cut out today for use in future mixed media projects!!
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