Paints

I began using watercolours back in 2012 after realising coloured pencils were far too time consuming and extremely hard on my hands. While in the past I have used oil paints and pastels, I didn’t develop a passion for them like I have with watercolours. There is just something about the way the paper soaks up the colours, the feeling I get when I see the colours drop and cascade into the water and once dry, the results are a pleasant surprise.

There is a huge difference between the quality of cheap, midrange and expensive watercolours as with any product in life. Watercolours come in beginner / student grade to artists / professional grade and I love to experiment with each of them.

At the moment my professional artists watercolours are Mijello Mission Gold, Daniel Smith (sample sheets) and a couple of Art Spectrum tubes. I recently picked up a small set of Winsor & Newton Cotman tubes as well as a couple of their pan sets. Both are considered a student grade, however I find these a delight to work with as much as the professional artists paints.

I don’t have a preference between tubes and pans, though prefer the pans for travel or for journaling for their ease of access and the tubes for when I am about to settle into a longer art session. I don’t have a must have or go to “brand” as I am yet to experiment with them all !!!

Paper

Only the best of course! I’m not much of a brand snob but I do believe in using quality Professional grade paper for the best results and I haven’t gone passed Arches 100% Cotton 300g/m. It comes in (as most brands) Hot Pressed (smooth) Cold Pressed (Medium) and Rough (er Rough).

I have been using the Hot Pressed mainly for detailed work, the use of a fine liner as well as scanning my work for easier background removal when editing for prints. I tend to go for tear out pads rather than blocks as I like to work on different projects at any given time. If I have unfinished work on a block, this prevents me from accessing the next page. Though I do love painting on them. I have a roll of Arches paper that I am too scared to touch, so expensive!

I recently purchased the Cold Pressed paper which has more of a tooth to it so I can try it out for something different. The Cold Pressed is most popular with watercolorists due to its thirsty nature, which can take more water than Hot Pressed. Also I have discovered, I much prefer to paint on A5 rather than A4 which I was accustomed to with Fashion Illustration.

I use cheaper varieties of watercolour paper for a 1st draft or practice paper such as Canson XL, Bee Paper, and other no names, so long as they are 300g/m or Art Journals.

Brushes

My paint brush collection is an assortment of cheap to midrange brushes that I have picked up over the years from various places, including the $2 shops and Officeworks. I own varying size brushes from size 0 to size 8 as I am yet to do a large scale painting and have not found the need for larger sizes than these.

I am eagerly awaiting a new paintbrush purchase and can’t wait to try them out! I will update this section once I have experimented with them. Up until now, I have no idea why I haven’t invested in some quality watercolour brushes? I hear they make all the difference. I jumped from paint to paper and skipped brushes entirely and into paint pallets!

Pallets

My obsession seems to be with paint pallets! I have used anything from dinner plates & egg dishes to traditional artists pallets and I still have my eye on more! I have large ones to these tiny ones you see in the image. I do have a couple of tin and plastic pallets but my absolute go too are, plaster / clay, porcelain or milk glass pallets. Oh and they must be white!

I think it is out of frustration in finding the perfect set up, space required and workflow as well as not wanting to wash off paint from existing pallets out of fear of wasting paint and wanting ones that have lids instead of ones that collect dust and fluff. There are just so many gorgeous pallets out there than there are paints and more affordable :)

I get the same satisfaction seeing the paint transform on a glistening porcelain paint pallet as I do on the paper!