Watercolor Dirtbag
One of the most important supplies for watercolor is paint itself. Oh, okay, you could go back and forth all day with galaxy brain paint hipsters about whether the real most important supply is the paper, the brushes, or the water, mannnnn. But paint is pretty important, anyway.
Previously: After swatching out all the colors from my 238-color Dot Card, I gave my thoughts on all the exciting color categories: yellow, red, purple, and so on. Now, I give my thoughts on the earth tones and grays. I know these can be important colors, especially in realistic landscape and portrait paintings (neither of which I have admittedly really done), but gosh, it’s hard to get excited about them.
Since I started painting I have actively resisted getting into earth tones and browns; the closest I get is having Quinacridone Gold which many people would consider more of a warm yellow. I just always want bright colors instead! Which is honestly not a bad impulse in watercolor, because you can always make muted tones from brights (by mixing complementary colors), but you cannot go the other way around. Anyway, life’s too short to buy paints that don’t spark joy.
But maybe I am missing something? Maybe earth tones CAN spark joy? Will this dot card change my mind??!
This Christmas, my Secret Santa gave me the Daniel Smith 238-color dot cards, a sampler that lets me paint just a li’l with (almost) all of Daniel Smith’s colors! This has been amazing, because I was previous learning about colors one-at-a-time, and I always felt like there were more Daniel Smith colors that I didn’t know about appearing from the ether all the time.
With these dot cards, I have been obsessing about color, trying to figure out the optimal palette for me. I’ve almost lost sight of why I’m doing it (to paint pictures). It’s all about the color baybee! Color for its own sake. Who cares about paintings.
To make my hyperfocus episode not totally feel like a waste of time, I thought I’d share with you some of my experiments in color. I spend hours (days) swatching out colors so you don’t have to!
Settle in with the beverage of your choice (not to be confused with your dirty paint water) while I summarize my takeaways, one color family at a time.