A place to encourage the creativity of artistic minds of all ages. Offering Ideas, Inspiration and Instruction and sharing the work of others who inspire me!
Now that the paint palette is optimized. I do like that I was able to get six rows of colours instead of the original four. You can use magnets or double sided sticky tape if you don't want your hands moving around. But I find they're pretty stable on their own. Guess it depends how passionately you paint. I was inspired to swatch colours out in a more random manner by watching Kristy Rice swatching and organizing her watercolours. Watch here.
It's all about having fun and letting the water colours flow together and not worrying about making everything perfect. And in the end, I ended up with some incidental cool abstract art.
Colour is watching is a good idea simply because a lot of watercolour ones it is dried or Harden, it's so dark you can't tell what colour it really is. Even under the tube once you water it down, hence the name watercolours, you don't really get to see the true colours. Many times I've seen paint pallets and thought boring, they all look like the same color, dark! But once the person starts to switch out the colours you realize how beautiful and individual they all are.
It's Only been a few months or so of trying to learn more about watercolour (in Canada colour is spelled with a "u"). Have I created any masterpieces yet? Nope. Not sure if any of you can relate to this, but I have an issue with collecting (purchasing) and organizing art supplies. Especially if it is a new medium like watercolour or a few years ago, polymer clay. This includes learning about these palettes I never tried before. When I first tried watercolour about thirty years ago, there was no such talk about this method of watercolour painting. It was all about using paint fresh from the tube. Nothing about using individual half or full pan holders where the paint purposefully dries. Once that happens, you just re-wet the pigments and paint.
Apparently this method prevents wasting of watercolour paint. I have been learning to appreciate the ability to re-wet the paint and use it to create those masterpieces.
Watch Watercolour Palette
This article is about re-organizing my new palette again. Trying to turn my 4 rows of pigment spots to 6 rows, eliminating the centre aisle. The idea to try this was from watching Kristy Rice videos. I noticed she has palettes packed full of paint colours. No need for a centre area. Will I finally get to painting with this variety of paints? Daniel Smith, VanGogh, Qor, Cotman, Winsor Newton and My handmade shimmer paints, Paul Ruben and M. Graham.
A Sneak Peak Just before I look into how to rearrange my new metal paint palettes. Definitely, not use to these kinds of palettes after decades of Acrylic painting palettes!
One of my favourite flowers are… Oriental poppies of course. We have had this plant from seed to its full beauty roughly 19 years ago and it's still going strong or should I say growing strong. It's hard to take just a few Photos. Hence this beautiful Poppy slideshow with some moving pictures as well. One
version is without sound and the other is with copyright free music. Not only do I take pictures for reference photos for future art projects. I just take them because I love the subject matter.
A word of advice, it's good to keep a file of your own photographs of whatever subject matter you think you might want in the future or whatever inspires you. That way you don't have to worry about breaking copyright laws. And being original is always the best. Unless you're doing a study of someone else's artwork. If you do paint or draw from someone else's painting or photo ask for permission or if it's a really old painting like I did in University by Cezanne, then just make sure you give them credit. I believe the one from University it was titled "after Cezanne " and then my name. Something like that.
Watch Music Version Below
Watch Silent version Slide Show Below
Hope you enjoy this slide show. Be inspired. A music version is coming soon.
Summer is flying by at a rapid pace. Instead of painting with Watercolours like I was planning on doing, I seem to be procrastinating by stocking up watercolour supplies, creating new shimmer paints, organizing and reorganizing my paint palettes. I love being able to have moveable colour pans. And
our poppies
Don't ask me how many brushes, palettes and watercolour pads I have purchased. If Amazon only had a frequent shopper reward system.
Make Your Own Paint
This is about how I learned to make my own shimmer paints using Interference and shimmery/mica type pigments. As well, you will also see my transformation to a Smurf!
Of course there are many tutorials on creating watercolour paints on your own. Google them. I just want to share how I did it with as little effort as possible, without mulling. How do we learn if we don't experiment and learn from others.
The cool thing is, we can use pigments to create acrylic and oil and tempura etc. paints also. The key is all pigments need to be combined with the appropriate binder. If you want to make watercolour as in my case, you need Gum Arabic solution (more on that later). For Acrylic you can use and Acrylic gel medium, I would even mic pigment powder with anything like polyurethane, varnish, clear glues. Basically anything that can harden, cure or dry. Using pigments in resins are also used to paint with resin "paint." Then for oil paint, you can use oil binders (not an expert on oil), I think Linseed oil is part of that paint? But not sure.
I definitely use purchased paint whether watercolour or acrylic. It's just after watching others make paint and especially shimmer paints, I thought I can try that. Since I have a collection of mica type pigments, I was excited to not need to by shimmer/colour shifting paints.
Materials Used
💗Shimmery/Mica Interference (mermaid) And Colour Shifting Pigment Powders
Binder ingredients
💗I also used a ready made Gum Arabic binder
💗Gum Arabic (I used it in powder form)
💗Vegetable Glycerin
💗Honey (tried some but decided it made the binder too sticky)
💗Clove oil (as a preservative for the binder that must be refrigerated)
Tools
💗A glass or ceramic tile
💗palette knife
💗a glass jar with lid
💗Paper towels
💗spray bottle of water
💗test paper in white and dark or black for testing paint
💗paintbrush
💗water jar for washing brushes
Watch the video to see how I started mixing pigment powder with the binder. Unfortunately, the camera overheated because it was too hot outside so I didn't complete the mixing process. Adding the binder in a bit at a time, waiting for the mixture to be like a watered down toothpaste sort of. Or kind of like Cheez whiz or sour cream, a combination between Greek and regular yoghurt texture. You can tell I like food by all the food references.😋 And then just make sure I was mixing and pressing down with the pallet knife as much as possible. Even if you think it's just mixed, there can still be unsaturated pigment particles.The more you mix, press, smoosh the powder with the binder, the better the paint will dry and be pretty darn good to use on paper.
Here are the half pan size paint pans
Once I am satisfied at the consistency of the pigment mixture I'd test out the mixture with a wet paintbrush on paper. With interference colours using black paper is the only thing that really works because you can't see the colour otherwise. I just like to make sure it's combined enough to create somewhat of a smooth paint. It's amazing how quickly the Arabic gum binder dries or cure's. Then I scrape it up with the pallet knife and drop it into a half or full watercolour paint pans.
Then let the paint basically dry out or harden. It's important to keep the lid off to let it harden. There's going to be mistakes made, and some paints may end up too wet and never really harden. You can still use them. But that's how we learn lessons. If you want to do the exact correct way to make watercolour paint using real authentic pigments and even the shimmer colour shifting pigment powders that I've used, then definitely check out the video about mowing below to see how it's done. And definitely check out lots of videos, to learn more about this process.
Please note: I do not use the proper technique for making watercolour paint simply because physically, I cannot use a device like a muller. Due to my neuromuscular disability, my hands and arms are not strong enough to even lift that thing. I just wanted to show you how it does work to some degree if you're just using shimmery powders and a pallet knife. Some pigments work better than others. Definer the pigment powders the better it seems to go..
Mulling
glass muller
How to make paints out of pigment powders the truly correct way, involves something called mulling, using a Muller. Here is what mulling watercolour paint looks like with a video on YouTube Showing how to do it correctly here at PearFleur The muller is a weighty piece of glass.
Binders are needed for all types of paint. In watercolour Gum Arabic is used in combination with water, glycerine and some use honey instead or with glycerine. I learned after to heat up the water (some recipes said to) When I did, it smelled badly and eventually it got better. Just look for recipes Watercolour Binder or I also purchased gum Arabic all ready to be used as a watercolour binder.
