Katie Woodward (@ramblingsketcher) is a New York City watercolor artist who authored Understanding Light in the Urban Sketchers Handbook series. She also does one of my favorite Instagram video series, Random Palette Mondays, where she draws three random colors (one from a “red” bag, one from a “yellow” bag, and one from a “blue” bag, but interpreted loosely) and paints a pre-selected scene from the resulting triad. It’s a great series because she shows how a wide variety of triads can be used to create unexpected results.
Supplies
I’m getting out of the gouache game
I like gouache and I’m glad I tried it. If I weren’t currently attempting to fit all my possessions into a few suitcases I’d probably keep my gouache supplies – at least for awhile longer. Ultimately, though, I think I’d still be on the path to switching back to watercolor-only at some point. In raising the bar for what I’ll keep, I realized that watercolor makes the grade for me, and gouache does not.
Here’s why.
My Most & Least Used Brushes for Watercolor & Gouache
Now that I’ve put a number of miles on each of my brushes, I can tell by their level of wear which ones are the most used… and which still have their caps on! My Most & Least Used Brushes by Category Wash Brush Purpose: Watercolor loose skies, backgrounds, wetting an area for wet-on-wet Most … Read more
Artist Palette Profiles: Poppy Balser
I recently started a series of classes with Poppy Balser, a celebrated Canadian artist based on the Nova Scotia coast who works in oil and watercolor. Balser uses a very limited palette!
What’s in my palette? (April 2024)
I’ve already shared different palettes in January and February of this year, but this time I’m serious! (I think.) I’m reducing my tube collection, not just what’s dry on my palette, because I am moving cross-continent next month and trying to get down to a “suitcases” level of stuff! That’s right, you heard it here first folks: after spending the last year touring various Canadian cities to find my favourite, I am officially moving to Vancouver.
So which paints are making the cut to come with me?
Spring Triad Variations
In Seasonal Triads, I landed on a triad of Quinacridone Magenta (PR122), Imidazolone Lemon (PY175), and Cobalt Turquoise (PG50) for my spring triad. But this isn’t the only one I tried. Here are my spring triad outtakes. Because I changed the colors one-at-a-time, they provide an object lesson in how subtly one color change can change the triad.
Seasonal Triads
Awhile back, I proposed green mixes for all four seasons, based on my observations of foliage in the Northeast US. Recently I thought, hey, I’m two-thirds of the way to a triad there, why not just fit a red to each of those? So I did. Here are my seasonal triads!
Pinks Revisited
Last year, I made a post exploring different pink colors I could make with my paints. My palette has changed a lot since then and it’s cherry blossom season again, so I decided to give it another shot.
Winter Palette 2.5
As we close winter and begin to enter spring, I wanted to note some slight changes I made to Winter Palette 2 throughout the season.
Fun Making Color Wheels with Artist Pigment Dot Org
A new artist pal got me onto artistpigments.org, a cool website that allows you to enter your specific paint collection and chart each color on various theoretical color wheels. This is cool! I immediately charted my entire paint collection.