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Color, Color, Color Everywhere! Color Confessions of a Traveling Artist, Part II

Color, Color, Color Everywhere! Color Confessions of a Traveling Artist, Part II

OK, this is the part I agonize over even more than the choice which palette to take on my travels (see part I).  There are only an limited amount of watercolor wells on any given palette.  So which lucky colors will get to go with me to France?

First I start with a warm and a cool of each of the primary colors.  Here are my thoughts, starting with the yellows.  Hansa yellow medium, of course, because it is a cool yellow and plays well with cobalt and cerulean blue for great greens.  It replaced Aureolin on my palette years ago because it is not fugitive.  My warm yellow of choice is always New Gamboge.   My cool red is Permanent Rose and the cool blue is Cerulean.  My warm red is Winsor Red and the cool blue is Winsor or Phthalo blue.  Here I run into my first delimma – should I include French Ultramarine or not.  It is suppose to be the warmest of all the blues which intrigues me but I think it looks a lot like cobalt blue.  It does make great darks but then so does Phthalo blue.  It has bounced back a forth from being on my palette and then getting ousted.  Sad day for French Ultramarine Blue – it stays behind!

Which colors are always on your palette?  If you were stranded on an island, which colors would you absolutely have to have?  These are the six that I could not live without!

“Color is my day-long obsession” Color Choice Confessions of a Traveling Artist, PART I

“Color is my day-long obsession” Color Choice Confessions of a Traveling Artist, PART I

“Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment. To such an extent indeed that one day, finding myself at the deathbed of a woman who had been and still was very dear to me, I caught myself in the act of focusing on her temples and automatically analyzing the succession of appropriately graded colors which death was imposing on her motionless face.”   Claude Monet

My Daniel Smith Metal Palette

 

I can relate to this quote and it often runs through my head.  It was running through my head as I prepared my palette for my upcoming trip to paint poppies in Provence.  The torment is which colors to bring along and which ones will be left home!  But first I had to decide which palette to take.  My very favorite metal Daniel Smith watercolor box can hold up to 24 colors in 1/2 pans!  Or I can switch some out, and bring full pans of the colors that I use the most.  It just doesn’t seem to hold enough paint for a 2 week trip with painting everyday. Sadly, I chose to not use this one.

My next favorite palette and the one I recommend to all my students.  It is the Heritage palette.   I love it because it has a lid and a gasket which lends itself very well for travel.  Also it is very affordable.  It also has a removable plastic tray that I slip a painted reference card with the colors that are on my palette.  

Heritage Brand, also know as the Mijello Fusion Air Tight Palette
My tiniest of all!

Then there is the little palette that I pull out on the airplane.  Ok, ok now you know that I am obsessive!  I can’t go that long without painting!  I love painting on those long plane rides.  I mean, what else are you going to do? I bought mine in France but there are lots of adorable mini palettes out there to choose from.

 There are also some great travel brushes that will fit inside the mini palettes.  My palette came with the tiniest of brushes and I have since added a Daniel Smith travel brush.

  Do you have a favorite traveling palette?  What is important to you when you travel and paint?   Which is more important to you – the amount of paint you can bring or the variety of color? 

Next I will be blogging about how I chose the colors on my palette.

Oh the agony of it all!