Crafted By Colette

In February I showed you the progress I was making with my watercolour painting, and the beautiful new paints I got for Christmas.  At the end of that blog post I mentioned loving tube paints but not liking the inconvenience of them.  I told you that I’d bought an empty palette and had plans to combine my Sakura Koi paints with my Arteza tubes to create a custom palette.  I promised a whole other blog post about it.

I actually created that palette shortly afterwards, but I’m only getting around to blogging about it now.  We all know what I’m like with letting projects sit in folders on my computer.

I got myself an empty tin palette.

And a bag of half pans that clip nicely into the palette.

Once I’d selected what paints I wanted to use, I labelled the bottoms of the pans.  I didn’t use all the pans, or all the spaces in the palette, so I left myself with some room to change later if I want.

I cut myself a piece of watercolour paper the right size to fit in the lid, and divided it into sections for swatches.

Then I started transferring paints.  Beginning with my Sakura Koi.  They didn’t pop out easily.  The palette was a plastic sheet glued into the main case.

The paints weren’t in individual pans, just in the plastic sheet.  Peeling them out was a little messy.  Because I hadn’t left them weeks and weeks to fully dry out they were a little gummy.  But I found that I could push from the bottom like a pill packet.

I got all the Koi colours I wanted in my new palette, and placed the plastic sheet back in the Koi case.

Now it was time for the tube paints.  These were fun.  Watching the little pans fill up, and seeing the little tiny peaks was very satisfying.

Eventually I had my new palette complete.

Sort of.  I didn’t have a turquoise/teal shade I liked.  And yes, with paint you can mix any colour you like.  But I use that turquoise/teal shade a lot, so I just mixed two of the tube paints and made my own.

I left it open for a few days to dry out a little, and voila!

Perfect!  I’ve used it a lot since.

It definitely looks used.  Very messy.  And also covered in stickers.  But I kinda like that.

If only I could use a waterbrush, then I’d be really mobile.  I could go outside and paint.  Apart from disliking the outside.  Oh well.