Supplies

Artist Palette Profile: Kelley Vivian

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One of my favorite gouache artists is Kelley Vivian, who paints gorgeous nature scenes typically in New England settings. She has painted numerous National Parks across the US, but her local park, like mine, is Acadia in Maine, and I just love her homey-looking Maine landscapes and seascapes, complete with lots of evergreen trees and rocky beaches. I especially like the way she treats golden hour and sunset light, with glowing sunlight flashing through the trees. 

Kelley’s work was an inspiration to me picking up gouache, and I consulted her site when choosing my gouache palette. Here’s what I learned.

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Finding Lightfast Gouache Pigments

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As I transition from a watercolor-only artist to watercolor-and-gouache, I’m finding that it’s harder to find lightfast pigments in gouache, even in professional/artist lines. I love Holbein and Winsor & Newton’s gouache, but I’ve seen so many pigments in their lines with super-low ASTM lightfastness ratings – not just the typical fluorescents (which are also much more widespread in gouache), but stuff like PR1 or PR60 that are uncommon in watercolor because they’re notoriously fugitive. What gives?

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Mix Your Own: Mission Gold

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I previously explained how to mix your own version of mixed Daniel Smith colors, and now I’d like to do the same for Mission Gold! Recently I happened to be window-shopping their line and saw some good ones that gave me new ideas for cool mixes. That’s cool thing about exploring brands’ commercial mixes – even if you don’t buy the paint, it can inspire your own explorations at home, if you have the component colors.

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Replacing Toxic Watercolor Paints

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Lately, I’ve been on a nontoxic paint kick, trying to see if I can be just as happy with a nontoxic palette as with one that contains toxic paints made from heavy metals such as cadmium, cobalt, manganese, nickel, and copper. This is mostly a personal challenge, as I think toxic paints are fine for adults to paint with as long as you don’t put them in your mouth, but I’m a messy painter so it does put my mind at ease a bit to be using the safest pigments. Plus, they’re better for the environment. 

So, what colors would I put in a nontoxic palette? How do you replace common toxic colors? And after a couple of months, which paints do I miss? Read on!

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Should watercolor beginners care about lightfastness?

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Lightfastness refers to the permanence of a pigment; some pigments tend to fade, darken, or otherwise change color with prolonged exposure to ultraviolet light, such as when displayed on the wall in a sunny room. The most lightfast a pigment is, the longer it can withstand the sun without changing color. Some pigments can last for hundreds of years. Others – fugitive pigments – tend to fade within months, unless kept away from light (such as in a closed sketchbook) or in carefully controlled museum lighting conditions.

My favorite online pigment experts, such as Bruce MacEvoy and Kim Crick, tend to base their opinions of various pigments in large part on lightfastness. But is this something I really need to care about as a beginner?

(My short answer is no, by the way, but read on.)

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What’s the best blue watercolor for the dusk sky?

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When I experimented to find my favorite blue for the sky, I focused mainly on the light blue midday sky, with a quick nod to deep dark night skies. These days, I find myself often drawn to the in-between gradient shades of dusk skies: inky night blue at the top, grading to pale muted cyan … Read more

The Summer Palette, Mark II

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Here’s my end-of-summer reveal: I’ve been working on a new Summer Palette this whole time!

I took my time to build this palette (which is why this post is appearing at the end of summer instead of the beginning). I went through several iterations, taking out different sets of colors to see how they performed in the real world when I tried to paint my surroundings.

This is the first time I’ve come around to make a second version of seasonal palette. The first seasonal palette I designed, last fall, was the Autumn Palette, but I added the Summer Palette quickly after. Let’s see how my new one compares!

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Artist Palette Profiles: JMW Turner

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So far, I have mostly profiled contemporary artists in the Artist Profile series, except for my first entry of Monet; but I’m on an art history kick after reading Watercolor: A History by Marie Salé. One of my favorite painters profiled in that book is the English painter JMW Turner (1775-1851), who is perhaps better known for oils but whose watercolors are fresh and lively.

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