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| Blue Lagoon Pallette |
Hi guys!
Does it happen to you thinking you never have enough paints to use with your artworks and you are sick of the standard pre-made watercolor sets?
I wish I could spend much of my time (and money XD) searching for new colors to add to my collection...I have a problem, I know! LOL
Lately some watercolor brands have producing sets that include colors selected for specific themes, for example to paint landscapes, portraits, flowers ecc.
I think it's an interesting idea for passionates of this art media but, come to think of it, you could make them yourself, with the possibility to pick only the colors you want!
The idea has born by the collaboration with the italian art supplier Mondo Artista. The team has been so kind and generous to let me choose some supplies I liked. I wanted some watercolor paints but I had a few pre-made palettes yet so I thought to make a personalized one based on my favorite colors: shades of blue, teal and cold green. Because the site has a huge selection of brands, picking singular pans was getting hard so I thought of a kind of strategy.
Before going ahead explaining how I picked the colors I want to let you see the swatches of the palette, at first I called it Ocean but I changed to Blue Lagoon.
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| Swatches |
Colors I picked are:
Lukas 1862
Indantrone Blue 1126, Paris Blue1133, Prussian Green 1157, Veronese Green 1158, Cobalt Turquoise 1168
Schmincke Horadam
Extra-fine Ultramarine 494, French Ultramarine 493, Helio Turquoise 475, Cobalt Green Turquoise 510
Neva Palette White Nights
Bright Blue 509, Cobalt Chrome Turquoise 533
Mijello Mission Gold
Blu Verditer 578, Opera Compose 594
I chose also Clairefontaine watercolor paper, Gerstaecker goat hair brushes and Winsor & Newton gold- bronze metallic ink but I'll tell about them coming soon!
As you see it's a mix of blues and mostly teals and cool greens, with different levels of transparency and granulation.
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| Artworks I made with my Blue Lagoon palette |
Here my suggestions about how to make a custom made watercolor palette!
First of all pick a theme. Do you like painting flowers? So, you'll surely need different shades of cold and warm red, purple, yellow, green and some earthy tones. Choose the colors you feel attracted by, later you'll be happy to find them in the set! Keep in mind that you can obtain many colors by mixing primaries, so it would be better to choose the ones that are hard to make by mixtures. It is even true that many paints are made by the union of more colors and adding even more during the preparation of colors for your artworks they might lose vibrancy so sometimes it is better purchasing a ready-made hue.
Obviously you should avoid paints you own yet and the ones you find in sets you want to buy in future to don't have duplicates.
Think carefully of the colors of the theme you picked, search for inspiration on Pinterest or look at pre-made fancy palettes. In is very helpful writting down the macro-groups of colors you need somewhere (ex. red, blue, green etc.) as reminder.
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| Opera realizzata con la palette Blue Lagoon |
The second step is choosing an art shop that sells singular pans. Explore your favorite store to see available brands, prices and colors range, the quantity of colors for your set depends on your budget, price of each pan/tube and of course by the amount you want! You can make a set with three colors, in my opinion a good set is made of 6 up to...100? XD
If the store has many brands and you have no idea where to start my advice is to focus on three or four, maybe your favorite brands or the ones you've been always wanted to try out!
Now add all the colors you like into a list of favorites or into the cart, you'll remove the ones you don't need later.
Take the notes where you wrote the macro-groups of colors and write names, brands and codes of the ones you absolutely want so you'll be sure you don' forget them, now you can s start sorting. It might be a long work but with a bit of patience you'll take home something you'll love!
The sample pictures of colors in on-line stores might be a little different by the real colors, I found very useful the di Jane Blundell's blog, she does swatches of the most of watercolor paints on the market (I'm jelous!XD) and the sawtches by Oto Kano .
Generally if you need a specific color swatch you have just to search the name on Google, keep in mind that generally ther's a slight difference because of the device screens.
Don't give so much importance to the name of colors because the shades depend on the company, for example Cadmium Yellow by Winsor & Newton is warmer than Cadmium Yellow by Daler Rowney.
You'll need a packaging for your paints, you can buy an empty watercolor palette or use a thin box as I did. A small cardboard box would be fine too.
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| Artwork I made with Blue Lagoon palette |
If you are newbie and you don't have any watercolor palette it would be better buying a basic pre-made set, it has all colors you need to start painting.
Here some ideas for personalized watercolor sets: vivid colors, kawaii colors, animals, woodlands, jungle, Monet or other artists inspired palettes, retrò, granulate paints, urban landscape, natural landscape, sea, coral reef, galaxies, Holidays...
Which palette would you make for yourself?
I hope this guide is going to be useful!
If you likes it, if you have a question, a critic or just a want to say "hi" feel free to leave a comment! :)
See you soon,
Sara
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