Melanie Testa

Palette

Of palettes, paint and refills.

Sticking to the theme of maintaining a watercolor/travel palette, I created the video above. The watercolor box you will see in the video was originally a Cotman Watercolor Compact Set set, that I reclaimed, replacing their palette with colors I know and love.

Cotman is Winsor  Newtons’s student grade paint set. Empty travel palettes can be quite pricey, so purchasing a student grade set can be a good entry level start to maintaining your own groupings of color, and the paints in them are decent, so you might choose to stick with these paints while you journey into painting with watercolor. Once those paints are used, you can begin purchasing tubes of paint to refill your half pans or pans, or, like me, you might purchase a cheapo palette of student grade paints and replace each half pan with professional grade watercolor paints that you already know and love.

To remove the student grade paint, I took each half pan, dipped it in water for just a moment and allowed the cake to soften some. When the cake appeared softer, I dug down into the side of the cake, between the plastic and the cake and pried the pigment cake out. I set those cakes aside and allowed them to dry (I just gave them to a budding young artist). Once I cleaned each half pan, I refilled them with my favorite M. Graham watercolor paints from tubes.

Traveling with Paint

During the webinar a few weeks back, Barbara asked what I would carry were I to travel to France. And while I have no plans to travel to France (though I would love to), I do know what I would carry were I to do so. The above palettes, as I talked about before, are really a child’s toy. But even still, they are metal, measure perhaps 1.25×2″ and have individual wells that hold 8 colors of paint. The lid closes nicely and this kids toy can become a great adult toy with some modification.

The paint that comes in these palettes are not great, but luckily, easy to remove. I am sorry I don’t have photos of the process but it is easy enough to describe. Using a tweezer or a pick, while the paint is dry, wedge the tool between the edge of the paint and the plastic well. The paints are glued in there and are easy to pop out. Clean all of the glue out of the well so that you have as much space as possible for your chosen paints.

Then line up the tube style watercolors you would like to put in your travel palette and start dispensing one color per well. I have been loyal to M. Graham paints lately. So I put Quinacridone Violet, Napthol Red, Ultramarine blue, Turquoise, Gamboge yellow, Azo Yellow, Yellow Ochre, and Payne’s grey in my palettes.

I have given these palettes to friends as a fun gift and one friend said she has a hard time using this palette because it is so small. She likes to mix a fair amount of paint and do washes, so this palette is not suited to that type of work. Assess how you think you would use paints while working on the go. Wrap the palette in saran wrap for an easy ‘mixing tray’, nab a paper coffee cup as a rinsing cup after breakfast in the morning, tuck a small paper towel into the lid of the travel palette to help dry it out when you are ready to pack up your supplies and dump them into you back pack.

Working on the go is much different than working at home with your favorite supplies. So when you are home and have all of your supplies in front of you, daydream about what you will need to make painting in France an easy reality.

I will post the link to what I carry when I travel again, just in case you missed it or want to know. Have fun Barbara and Shirley (both are traveling abroad). I look forward to seeing what artwork your travel stirs up.