Watercolor Dirtbag
I’m really enjoying the Urban Sketching Handbook series: short, image-packed books that focus on watercolor on location. As a color enthusiast, one of my favorites so far has been Working with Color by Shari Blaukopf.
In the book, Blaukopf does list the colors in her current 23-color palette, though she cautions, “Don’t lock yourself into a final selection. In fact, I’m constantly swapping colors because I love to experiment.” Same!!
Still, let’s look at the palette listed in the book.
Transparent Red Oxide and Quinacridone Burnt Orange are both transparent, highly granulating earth oranges — alternatives to Burnt Sienna. Both can be mixed with Nickel Azo Yellow (PY150) to create a Quinacridone Gold hue. So what’s the difference between them, and why might you choose one over the other?
It’s the battle of the granulating earth oranges!
In previous posts on Jeanne Dobie’s Making Color Sing, I experimented with “mouse colors” and color-mixing. In chapter 3, Dobie focuses on a single color family: green! Green is such an important color for landscapes and has so many different mixable personalities that it’s often the subject of special attention; Shari Blaukopf also has a great spread on greens in Urban Sketching Handbook: Working with Color.
I sometimes like to sketch with a drawing pen before I paint over it in watercolor. Essentially, I’m making myself a coloring page using liners, brush pens, or both. However, I find myself often using pens which smear when I begin to paint over them. This is a great way to ruin a line drawing and muddy up a painting before I even start.
But which pens are actually waterproof enough to use with watercolor? I tried all the pens from the JetPens Waterproof Pen Sampler and the JetPens Waterproof Brush Pen Sampler to find out.
The Autumn Palette was so much fun to put together that I decided to go back in time and do one for summer. Even though the weather’s getting colder where I am, the Summer Palette captures the warmth and fun of summer!
To be honest, summer is my least favorite season in reality because I hate being hot, but I love the aesthetic of summer: the beach, the boardwalk, bright colors, sunny skies, nostalgic/steamy tan-toned blue skies.
In this palette, the top row represents a rainbow of brights, while the bottom row is the colors of nature.
It’s no secret that my favorite earth yellow is Daniel Smith’s Monte Amiata Natural Sienna (PBr7). But I also like a yellow ochre; for example, Holbein’s Yellow Ochre (PY42). They’re so similar that I wouldn’t want to have both in my palette at the same time, so which should I choose? Which is better in which situation?
I think of myself as being a color person, being in touch with my favorite colors, but when I started putting together my watercolor palette and having to actually make choices between colors, I found it really difficult! It’s easy for me to get really into a color, or to have multiple similar “favorites.” How do I choose between quinacridone rose vs. purple magenta when I love both of them? Am I more of a bright color person or a muted color person? What if it depends on my mood?
Happy autumn! I love fall – it’s my favorite season – so I’ve been super excited to collect fall colors and do fall paintings lately! I’ve put together this theme palette focusing on the warm tones of autumn, like colorful leaves and pumpkins. It could also be considered a golden hour palette because it’s designed to bring out those warm, golden, sunshiney moments right before sunset.
In analyzing my palette, one of the “gaps” I identified was a dark red to help me mix reddish browns and deepen my red and orange mixes, especially for autumnal paintings. There were a few options for this slot:
I’ve given Perylene Maroon a couple of shots and never really liked it, but I like both QBS and DS unmixed. They’re actually quite similar:
In terms of hue, Quin Burnt Scarlet is a bit browner and duller, and DS is a bit closer to a typical red-orange.
It’s hard to tell from the above because I made a concentrated effort to make a dark pasty mix on the leftmost square, but in general I also find it more difficult to get a dark tone from Quin Burnt Scarlet; the second square is more representative the darkest typical tone. The Deep Scarlet is very easy to get dark.
Both are transparent, staining, and non-granulating.
Since they’re really similar unmixed, which is better in mixes?
I have a seatoolkit diet: I see a new Art Toolkit, I buy it. Specifically, I love colored and patterned Pocket Palettes. I recently styled the Traveler’s Notebook Company special green palette as a neon palette, and so when I saw an even newer special palette out, the Grow Untamed palette, I had to nab it! This one comes loaded with Letter Sparrow paints, a company I’ve never tried, so being able to try them was a bonus. (This is NOT a sponsored post, by the way. Just my unprompted thoughts on a recent supplies purchase.)
The palette Grow Untamed palette is based on the desert art of Melissa Esplin. It comes with 5 colors. They’re all relatively opaque, which is not my favorite style of painting to do (let’s just say I am not as adept at it as Melissa Esplin), but it made an interesting change.