It was finally time to go through my jar full of random watercolor paint tubes and fill up a new paint palette. All the paints are either Winsor & Newton Cotman series or Reeves. I test them on this beautiful ceramic paint palette by Good_Press_Ceramics. You can find her on instagram and Etsy.
I think handmade paint palettes are a new addiction of mine...
I started by laying out all the paints I had and picking one of two tubes of each color, thinking about what colors I typically paint with. Most colors I only need one but blues and greens I tend to enjoy having two options available. I'm notorious for mixing brown into all my paints when I'm painting, so I hardly use a color straight from the tube anyways.
I finally decided on my paints and proceeded to squeeze out a small amount in each well of the ceramic palette. The individual wells have perfect little corners for the paint so I can pull away how much I want to use each time I paint. However, one of the colors was proving to be difficult...
Look at the annoying raw sienna. It would not open so I ended up squeezing it so hard that it practically burst! I made a silly little video about it on my instagram and after it went viral, I found out I'm definitely not the only one that has experienced this...
Also hopefully you notice the beautiful wooden handmade sketchbook I'm holding. It has cold press paper for the pages and is a work of art all on it's own. It's by Arkstone who you can find on instagram and on their website.
Once I finally had my colors ready, I finally got to swatch! When I'm swatching out colors I like to make a picture with the colors, even if it's something silly and abstract. One of my favorite ways to do that is with circles! Just make a bunch of circles, try overlapping and changing the sizes to see how the colors interact together.
Besides just seeing the colors, you'll also trying to understand how the colors act, how transparent they are, how vibrant they are and and how do they move.
Next time you have some new paints to try out, have fun with it! It's fun to have a cute paint palette and sketchbook, but anything works as long as you get to paint. Check out the whole process in the video below and subscribe to my youtube channel so you don't miss out!
Stay creative!
-Alyssa
