Watercolor Palette Setup

I’ve been on the hunt for a good palette to recommend. I had a few things I was looking for….

1. Metal. I just like a good metal palette. (I have a bunch of expensive Italian palettes that can’t be had over here, and couldn’t find a way to have them imported.) Plastic palettes have the un-fun problem of having the paint blobs pop out. Yikes!
2. Wells to wash. Lots of palettes have the mixing sections in the centers, surrounded by the paints. While it might be easier to drag paint out of wells, it’s also pretty impossible to give ’em a really good washing. I like to sometimes run it under water to get it good and clean.
3. Pans. There are palettes with built-in wells, but depending on how they’re constructed, paint and liquid can move around from one well to another pretty easily. In pans, I find that a wet palette is a little easier to toss in the bottom of my bag (I do try to keep it flat if it’s good and wet) without making a mess.

So….the Schminke palette is pretty close to my fancy European palette! The only differences are the mechanism to hold in the pans, and the shape of the wells. Pretty minor, eh? So I now have this Schminke palette, filled with my Daniel Smith Essentials PLUS the 18 colors on my new dot card. (Total of 24 half-pans.) If you want to make a swatch sheet for this palette yourself, click HERE for the pdf.

Video

Watch the video below or click HERE to see it in HD on YouTube.

My Daniel Smith dot card!

In the fall, the good folks at Daniel Smith asked if I’d pick my top 18 cards so they could make a dot card out of them. EEEP! Apparently enough of my followers from around the world have mentioned my name to them that they think I’m a bigger deal than I am. LOL. Anyhoooo….here it is. Cool huh? Colors are all listed in the supply list below.

Supplies

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• Daniel Smith Watercolors: EH – BLICK
  • Lemon Yellow
  • Quinacridone Gold
  • Permanent Yellow Deep
  • Quinacridone Burnt Orange
  • Transparent Pyrrol Orange
  • Quinacridone Coral Quinacridone Pink
  • Green Apatite Genuine (PrimaTek) Sap Green
  • Phthalo Green – Blue Shade
  • Ultramarine Turquoise
  • Indanthrone Blue Phthalo Blue – Red Shade
  • Manganese Blue Hue
  • Carbazole Violet
  • Pearlescent Shimmer (Luminescent)
  • Sepia
  • Lunar Black
• Daniel Smith Watercolors Essentials set of 6: • EH – BLICK
• Arches Cold Press Paper: EH – BLICK
• Schmincke Palette: EH – BLICK
• Schmincke Watercolor Pans, Empty Half Pan
• Half pans: EH – BLICK
• Scor Tape 1/8″
• Scor Tape 1″
• Silver Brush Black Velvet Round #8: EH – BLICK – AMZ