Apple-Pine: watercolor palette

Showing posts with label watercolor palette. Show all posts

Palette Refresh

After a pretty bleak report about my current materials (first page of each sketchbook is usually dedicated to this self-assessment) I decided to seek a cure in the form of refreshing my tool kits. It is a long task as I have many - but the very first step was to wash, clean, and refill my main "on-location" watercolor+gouache palette. Here is the result: click on the image to see all the notes and feel free to ask questions here or on substack.

DS - Daniel Smith, SCH - Schmincke Horadam, WN - Winsor and Newton. HOLB - Holbein.

Current tools and my Hybrid Watercolor/Gouache palette

I prefer writing in my sketchbook to typing hence if you want to know details - click on the image to see it larger. And if anything in unreadable or needs more info - I will try and answer all questions!

A lovely hike and sketch - with an unexpected frustration.

I had a couple of brief moments of waiting for my companions on a local hike recently and I sketched. But with some unexpected frustration: both reds in my pocket palette lost the pigment completely. Both my Cadmium Red and Alizarin Crimson just fossilized.

This is a hike that in winter is very blue and green. At least that is how I think about it, so I did not need reds too much - but I missed mixing grays for the shadows and tree trunks and roads and trails!

There was no return of pigment no matter what I tried at home - including soaking for multiple days and grinding and then soaking, grinding, and adding binding agents - nothing worked - the best I got back after a lot of work was very weak gray.

But now I refilled the palette and hopefully am ready for the next hike!

Current Main Watercolor Palette

I like having these records about my palleter. I use them when I am making a decision as to what color to remove or how to simplify my palette, what colors to pick for the particular project. Or what colors to add to a yet new palette.

But I also use these when I need a boost. Making these record reminds me how much I enjoy just playing with color. And later on I can go back to these, see how I loved some color or color combination and would be excited to paint again.

These are useful when I need to reorder fresh tubes of paint too.

The end of Sketchbook #118 and my review of Hahnemuhle Watercolor Book

I just finished my Sketchbook #118 and decided to write some notes to myself about it - and share them here. It was a Hahnemuhle Watercolor Sketchbook 8' x 11.5", horizontal, 60 pages of 200 g watercolor paper one and I worked in it for a month and a half.

Most of my notes are in the image below but if you don't want to zoom in and read all that - here is a shorter version: it's a great landscape-oriented book which I loved and hated at the same time. So much space is amazingly inviting! But if you work in a crowd or in a small space or if you are sketching while standing it is very hard to manage. Keeping book open even with a minimum of other materials became a struggle and I ended up layering pages with sketches done in other books and later taped or glued in.

I loved the cover - it's almost a musical instrument when you scratch it with your nails :) Round corners were nice for tucking the book in my body and backpack. It opens flat very nicely. And paper withstands a lot - from acrylic to gouache to pencil to ink to watercolor and markers - it survived it all.

At first, I was disappointed with the surface - see my comments on the first page of the sketchbook where I painted my two mini palettes from expeditionary art. One on the left was purchased empty and filled with my "play" colors what I change often and one on the right was created by Maria Coryell-Martin and Marc Taro Holmes for Direct Watercolor Sketching.

Paper seemed sleek for my taste of working with the flexible and/or soft nib and it took a long time for the ink to dry (I was using Platinum Carbon Ink). But opened up some possibilities for mixing colors on the page as paper (because of the slickness) was not as absorbent. I switched to Uni pens, felt tip pens and then ballpoint pens. Overall I tried to use less amount on ink with fountain and dip pens and even though it took me some time to figure out what works best, I had fun and got used to the combination pretty fast.

I think I would love to try this book in the vertical format at the same size! And might use this one if I have a project that is calling for the wide and happy spreads and I have a place where to work on it.

Sketchbook #114: Palettes

After a bit of travel hiatus I am back to blogging with high res images - and first come my watercolor palettes (larger one is the main and smaller one has all the extra / crazy colors) and my dry gouache palette. I take it with me when I travel as it raises fewer questions at the airport but it takes longer to make colors work with it and I kill brushes often as I have to really work pigment into them for the desired gouache-ness.

Sketchbook #112: My Palettes

I draw my tools pretty regularly - just because they are right in front of me :)

But this time I decided to allocate first pages of a new sketchbook (it's a Stillman & Birn Alpha softcover) specifically for a record of my current palettes and colors.

This is something I saw in Liz Steel 's sketchbook - and later noticed that a great many other artists enjoy this ritual :)