Watercolor swatch diary

After seeing a youtube where a watercolor painter got a paint diary as a gift for christmas 

I though to myself "Self, you should do that!"

yellow

And since I'm cheep and I have a lot of little booklets of random watercolor paper, 

from the box of art supplies a month in a box company "Sketchbox". 

Orange

I got my ruler out and outlined the pages of one myself.

Old color swatches

This is how I swatched my colors before

Its an acceptable way to do it but 

I have gotten more paints since then 

and ran out of room

Brown

This exercise not only gives me one place to see all my colors, 

Blue/green

It gives me an example of how those colors interact with water.

And that is important because with watercolors you are not only playing with pigment

Blue

you are playing with water and how it reacts with the pigments

Reds

Honestly it's the water part I work on controlling the most

Purples

Do they feather, do they fade or cauliflower, do they granulate, do they separate? 

This aspect of WC painting is endlessly fascinating to me

Watching it mix or bloom into other colors or not

some colors don't bloom into colors they suck up colors

Pinks

All watercolor paints do at least one of these things, some do several of these things at once

You don't find this out just using the cheep cake paints, of our youth

you really do need at least 1/2 pans of something professional or at least student grade. 

I recommend  Daniel smith, Windsor Newton or Schmeink.          

They have very nice sets in travel boxes that aren't too expensive to just play with

Iridescent colors

I have wandered sidways into trying out some of the more expensive tubes of professional grade paints 

in Daniel smith which is my favorite less expensive Watercolor so far.

The L'Aquirelle and MiremirBlu are also very nice but they are $10-20 a 5oz or 15oz 

tube so be cautioned,

this hobby gets expensive fast!

It's Meeeeee!

It's meee!

This lovely little watercolor portrait was sent to me by Observer of Human Nature from over on instagram, go give her a lookie-loo, her water color paintings are amazing and detailed and I am so grateful!                                                                                                   This came before Christmas and at the time I was not able to give it the full attention it deserved,                                                                                                      so I put it aside                                                                                                                                               Aaand promptly forgot about it in the press of seasonal things and doings                                          (I feel so ashamed!)                                                                                                                                           But as soon as things calmed down a bit I found it in my sketchbook and OMG! It's a little masterwork!     

It's so pretty! And ORANGE!!!!! Squee!                 I added a peach and cream ribbon rose,                                                                                                      I may add more!                                                                                           

Fooling around with watercolors

there is a lot of doodling one must do 

with watercolor paints to get them to work right

There is also a lot of brushwork 

and water distribution

It's that last part that has been giving me the most trouble

to little and the paint skitters over the paper

 leaving skid marks and empty spots

To much and it leaves puddles of color in odd places

that pool and dry with hard edges

to much water will also thin out the pigment 

to almost invisibility 

in an already transparent medium

Then there is the paper itself to worry about

mixed media paper is good to practice brush strokes

and color mixology, which is completely different than color theory 

and your initial water retention on

 

but not good enough for actual pictures

because the paper will suck the water right out of your brush  till it gets pilly and weird

and any attempt at finesse will go right out the window

the leaning curve between too much water and not enough is

proving difficult 

But rewarding

and it tickles my colorbone

I will leave you with a cat 

or two