Watercolor Dirtbag
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?
I’m working through Jeanne Dobie’s Making Color Sing, and after exploring chapter 1’s Mouse Power, I’m up to chapter 2: Octanic Color. The topic of this chapter is finding an individual paint color’s bias (e.g. lemon yellow is a “cool” or green-toned yellow), and using that to mix vibrant color. Although Dobie uses “warm” and “cool” terminology – which I notoriously dislike – I take the point that it’s important to know a paint’s color bias in order to mix vibrant paints! It’s easy to say that “red and blue make purple,” but your purple will come out different depending on which red and which blue you use.
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.
In my article on earth tones, I reviewed some common earth tones that you might have in your palette. But I also stressed that you don’t need all of them; you might just pick your favorites and mix the hues of the others.
So, how exactly do you mix up those various brown hues? If you have only one earth tone, what should it be? Which single earth tone gives you the greatest ability to mix a range of different browns?
In Making Color Sing, Jeanne Dobie advises on the best ways to use color (primarily in watercolor, but in general). In the first chapter, “Mouse Power,” she takes on a common newbie issue: how to make colors look bright?
The urge is to use bright paints. And you know I love bright colors! Yet, you may use lots of bold, exceptionally bright colors in your work, and still create a piece that looks muddled. Meanwhile, someone else may use much more muted colors, yet achieve a kind of glow. Why is that?
I’ve decided to dedicate my new, vibrant green Travelers Paper Co x Art Toolkit Pocket Palette to a Neon Theme!
Just like colored newspaper hung in a window, some watercolor pigments fade when exposed to light. Sometimes, that fading is on such a long timescale that it’s virtually fadeproof from the point of view of anyone living now (a paint that can withstand direct sunlight for 100+ years would be considered “lightfast”). Other times, the fading may occur in a matter of months (a “fugitive” paint), especially if the painting is exposed to direct sunlight, like being hung in a sunny room. By contrast, even fugitive paint colors will retain their vibrancy if closed in a sketchbook.
So how do you know which paints are lightfast and which are fugitive, and which are somewhere in between?
The time has come! I’ve avoided making a “what’s in your palette?” post since I started this blog because it has changed so rapidly that it would always be out of date between when I wrote it up and when I posted it. But since doing Liz Steel’s course, I’ve settled on a pretty great set of colors that has had more sticking power than my previous sets, so I thought: it’s time!