Watercolor Palette

Over the years, I had gathered some plastic palettes for water color painting. However, they tend to stain and not allow you to see the true color that you are blending. Additionally, while I understand color theory, it's helpful to have the colors arranged according to the color wheel. This allows me at a glance to know what will happen when you blend together two different colors.

To help with this, I purchased a Stephen Quiller Porcelain Palette. As you can see, this palette allows me to arrange my colors according to the color wheel. It's also a heavy palette, which since I can be a bit awkward helps me avoid knocking it onto the ground. Further, since it is made of porcelain, it cleans up quite easily and the paint does not stain it.

But since I will also be taking watercolor classes and doing paint sketching "in plain air", I needed a more portable solution. (Or as the art world calls it, "plein air" watercolor sketching and painting). So, I purchased a Mijello Fusion Air-Tight Watercolor Palette. Though I don't have quite the same color wheel advantage, I can still arrange colors as if they were in a color wheel.

If I'm traveling longer distances and want to go lighter, I can take a more compact kit along. The Winsow & Newton Cotman Field Plus kit includes a little water bottle two water cups, a small travel brush and areas to serve as the watercolor palette. Take that and a watercolor visual journal along and I'm all set to go! In fact, as the weather cools, I hope to get out and do some photographing and sketching of various sites around our area. These quick sketches will provide me with a feel that a camera (phone or otherwise) just is not able to capture. Plus add a few notes into the journal and I'll have great resource material for further paintings.

By the way, as a hint, if you don't like the quality of the Winsor & Newton Cotman paints, you can pop out the half pan paints and use the empty plastic half pans to put in your favorite tube paints. Though it will dry after a while, a good artist quality tube paint will rapidly remoisten with a little water on the brush.

I decided to purchase an empty half pan kit and empty half pans. With those, I can put in my own paints and fill it to be able to carry all of my paints with me when I travel. My Winsor & Newton Cotman Field Plus kit allows me to travel with everything in one kit. But this allows me, for longer trips to carry more colors.

As you can see from the photograph, this empty half pan kit has a thumb ring to allow you to securely hold the tin with half pans. A nice feature for plein aire painting.