⎨A new handmade palette for plein air watercolor journaling⎬
After my Sketchbook Date I wrote about in the previous post, I was soon starting building up lots of momentum regarding my sketchbook practice.
I decided that, in order to make it happen more frequently, I really needed a much more compact travel palette.
Of course, I would never bring with me my professional palettes I use for my job, so some years ago, when I started my sketchbook practice en plein air in England, I had purchased a Winsor & Newton Cotman 45 pan palette, that I thought would have been great as a travel palette, as it’s made of plastic and contains 45 half pans in different colors.
While it might work fine, as it’s sturdy and practical, it simply doesn’t work for me as it is way too large to be used outside (if not on the garden table!).
So I decided to use a black, small enamel watercolor box that I already had, but I soon faced the problem that I did not have enough pans to fill it, and for no reason at all I wanted to buy new ones. I’m still very much into my “Adventures in Minimalism”, and I intend using what I have before buying anything new.
At that point, I remembered I had a plastic box full of leftover tubes. I had placed them there when I reorganized my studio, and I only sporadically used a few of them. Before buying new stuff, I decided to rescue that box, and see what I could find.
I ended up finding a lot of tubes, a mix of artist quality and basic quality tubes, that I had purchased for different uses. Among them, I also had kept my Nonno’s tubes as mementoes. He passed decades ago, but my Dad had kept some of his art supplies to give me, when he had decluttered his studio many years ago, and I had kept them ever since. I kinda remembered the tubes were almost all dry, but I wanted to keep them anyway, as I was very affectionate to my Nonno, and he basically passed onto me his love and passion for art (… and the artistic genes! :)).
Imagine my surprise and my fast-beating heart when I realized that many of those tubes were still usable! I have chills and goosebumps again now while typing this! A gift from my beloved Nonno.
To cut the long story short, I ended up buying a new blue palette with empty pans, that was cheaper than buying just the empty pans, and filling it with colors from all those tubes. Some are my Nonno’s, some are mine, and a very diverse mix of brands and quality, but I don’t mind!
I now have my new DIY Travel Watercolor Palette, and I couldn’t be more excited for it!
Stay tuned to see my first experiments en plein air with it…
And you? Which palette do you use for watercolor journaling outside? Or which one would you like to have?
Is is a store-bought one or a handmade one?
Monica xoxo
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