Daniel Smith+ 31-color palette

So finally set up and painted out my professional watercolor palette. It's comprised of 31 Daniel Smith paints, several of which are the earthy primatek colors, 4 Winsor & Newtons, and 5 M Grahams. I'm trying to use up the M Grahams, lovely colors, but messy because of the gooey honey used in the formula. If I used my colors only in a studio, I would absolutely treasure my rich M Grahams, but the traveler has a messy paintbox because of the gooey paints, especially Pyrrol Scarlet, not a color anyone wants going all over their paintbox!

After I put together my colors and painted them out, my palette still had an empty lower left corner so added in the rich M Graham azo green (it's a bit less yellow than the W&N green gold already in the palette) and the three Turner paints: Alizarin Crimson (no one makes a color-fast AC so got a cheap color to test out what the rave on the color was about), copper (how absolutely lovely!) and clove (opaque but beautiful color no one else has). 

After painting 39 of the colors out (didn't include Buff Titanium as I can guess what the combinations would be), I realize I went a little heavier on earth tones than I intended, but in my defense my interest is animal painting and the colors I bought were mostly single pigment so capable of mixing with any other single pigment for "good" mixing qualities.

Daniel Smith 240-color Chart

Daniel Smith has an extensive selection of watercolors, and while I can look online to see the color charts of others, sometimes it's hard to tell about intensity and mixing qualities of certain colors or even about how it looks in comparison with colors in other brands I'm more familiar with, so I ordered the DS 240-color-dot cards to paint out the sample of watercolors for myself.

If you turn the above chart 90-degrees to the left,
the 4 groups of colors are exact representations of the 4 DS 240-color dot-cards. 

The blues, greens and earth tones got my closest attention as I'm most interested in making animal paintings. One color that I was really looking forward to testing out was Yavapai, a yellow-brown ochre-like color; I wanted to see how it compared with raw sienna and goethite, but from this chart and looking at online samples I'm thinking that Monte Amiata might be a better color choice as Yavapai seems a bit browner than what I'm looking for. However, still not sure as Yavapai was NOT included in the 240-color selection. Bit disappointed, but I did learn a LOT and made shifts in what colors I would and would not get in the future. 

Derwent Artbar Color Swatches + Sample Painting

Am pretty good about stemming impulse buys, but I bumped into a few questions on whether the Derwent Artbar were still being sold so tried to find out if they were being discontinued. Who can wade through the rumors on the web, so because I had been looking at the Artbars, and because Amazon had one left and at the cheapest price I'd ever seen, I did the impulse thing and bought the full 72-color-bar set. 

Here's the result of my impulse buy -- a full color chart of the Artbars. My method was to liberally apply 3 cm of color on dry 200gm watercolor paper and then add water with a paintbrush and drag the color down about 6-7 inches.  I might add I didn't apply strong pressure when liberally applying the color as the bars easily break along the score lines. The outcome is that the paint looked light but dried even lighter. Before purchasing, I did know the Artbars were a bit light in color but I was a bit surprised at just how pastel they are, especially the 12 colors in the "light" category.

That said, there are many ways to apply color. To make the chart above I used the dry then wet approach, but I found that wetting a paint brush and swiping up paint from the edge of an Artbar was a more effective way of painting; more effective on not leaving a trace of non-hydrated Artbar from coloring dry with pressure and more effective because the color intensity could be more easily managed. Like in the dry bar on dry paper method, for this wet brush on Artbar technique I didn't need a palette to mix the colors, but who would with a selection of 72 colors to choose from?! 

So here's a sample painting using the wet brush and swipe on Artbar method to get color for painting: 

Chinese-style tiger painting

Derwent Artbars and Pigma Micron pens - Original

My opinion about the Artbars? Well, they are pastel and because they are so light, I do wonder about how lightfast they are, and so am unlikely to use them for a painting to be hung on the wall. However, they are quite fun to use and I can see taking these "fun" colors out (and 72 of them!) when friends or kids come over and having an art party! A party without having color mixing trays so easy to organize and easy to clean up after too! They'll be awesome for making greeting cards or putting some quick and easy drawing-painting like the above in a letter. So this impulse buy isn't one that I regret.