Palette To Go!

Pretty colors

Today, I have been working on a very light little palette for sticking in my bag. You can never tell when you need to paint! This one was an eye-shadow set from the local Dollar Tree - making it a great price!  I have another that I got there a while back but the little pans were quite small - not really brush-sized. The pan areas in this one however, are much wider, making it possible to use a larger brush.

Emptied and washed out.

One problem with filling any watercolor palette is choosing which colors to add. This palette's arrangement made it easy to put a cool yellow, red and blue on one side and a warm yellow, red and blue on the other.

My quick-reference for the palette.

Making a color chart - and keeping handy - is important. I will need to make another that will be covered in plastic and stuck to the bottom.

When the paints are in a palette, remembering what color is which is often hard to do without testing them each time because they often look quite similar.

Choices!!! I have a lot of paint - I've been collecting it for decades.

There were still six empty spaces so I started thinking about the colors that would be convenient. I loved the old alizarin crimson but it proved to be fugitive but I think that Winsor & Newton's Brown Madder is a good substitute. I forget to use it in it went. I tested all of my purples (yes, I have a few) and then mixed the reds and blues I already had added to the palette and discovered that mixing one would be better. 

My testing sheet - inexpensive paper that has few other uses but is excellent for this. 

I wanted Daniel Smith's Transparent Permanent Orange because it is proving to be a great paint as has my old favorite DS Quinacridone Gold. Rich Green Gold is appealing as is Cobalt Teal, both Daniel Smith's. 

The mostly filled kit with a cheap brush for splattering.

I still have one space left. I set an empty-half pan in front of the palette for comparison. Half pans  are deeper but the eye-shadow slots would allow a bigger brush to make less of a mess.

I love to have some sparkle and often have some gold available but I also love to have some Lunar Black (Dan Smith) which can give some wonderful texture to other colors, too. For now, it is empty. I haven't decided if or which brush I will be trimming down to add in there. Because the lid is domed, it will hold thick things, as long as they don't roll off into the paints. For now, it is set aside for the paint to dry. There is nothing worse than having a palette of freshly added paints turn upside down in the bottom of a bag and you don't notice it before it has all mixed and dried after running all over everything.

I just scuffed up the inside of the lid with a fine, sponge sanding block to make the paint not bead up. It is foggy but works well. I also positively know that a waterbrush will not fit inside... It will have to be put in my kit.