As i use the University of Youtube to teach me all about watercolours, it appears that artists eagerly produce mix charts for every palette they use. So, not to be outdone, i proceeded to do just this with my one single palette.
By doing this one can learn many things: it’s not just about the colours, but also the relative strengths of the pigments within each colour. And i do admit that it was also a rather enjoyable pleasure watching the colours change as i mixed them.
My palette consists of 17 Winsor & Newton Cotman colours, and one Winsor & Newton Professional colour — that being the Winsor Red.
It struck me as i was mixing them the difference in quality between the Winsor Red and the Cotman colours. When mixing with the Winsor Red i only had to apply a tiny amount compared to the Cotman colour i was mixing it with, else the Winsor Red would simply over power the other colour. So a good lesson learned there as to the difference between student grade and artist grade watercolours. I look forward to slowly swapping out the Cotmans for artist grade ones as time goes by.
Certainly the first colour i want rid of is the Sap Green. This colour, i felt, just totally lacked any mojo and was easily drowned out by other colours. It doesn’t look too bad on the mix chart, but to get those colours with it i had to use over twice as much paint as the other colours. So whether i want rid of it or not, it isn’t going to last very long anyway. Therefore, i shall return to the University of Youtube and find me a suitable replacement to try.
For anyone interested, i used a sheet of Fabriano Artistico trad white for this.
So my next step in my watercolour journey is to simply play around to find the colours i need and learn to apply them nicely in order to paint my recent picture of De Waag.
Ta ta for now. x
