In this post I share my first impressions of Holbein Artists’ Watercolor by swatching all the colors in the 18 color set. (This post is sponsored by MisterArt.com.)

Today I’m sharing the 6 essential colors I include in all my palettes (along with some notes about changes I might make in the future!)

In today’s guest post, handmade watercolor paint-maker Stacey Dodds of Stakiwi Colours shares 4 reasons why handmade watercolor are different than store-bought watercolors.

Today’s post is written by a guest author, the very talented Priscilla Lee! Priscilla is an artist with a beautiful, delicate sensibility. Besides calligraphy and watercolor, she is a maker of ceramic dishes and watercolor palettes. Below, she shares the story behind her journey to ceramics and the making of her handmade watercolor palettes.

In today’s post, I’m sharing the 24 colors I have in my 24-well watercolor palette. Color selection is a personal choice and it all comes down to what colors you personally enjoying painting with. I believe as my own painting experience evolves, so will the color selection in my palettes.

Sometimes I think about what it would be like to be one of those people that comes over and organizes your home for you. I love organizing things, but I’m pretty sure I’m not good enough to be a professional home organizer. Mostly because in the end it’s not hyper organized, it’s just organized enough so that I can find all my stuff and my space doesn’t feel crazy.

So if you’re looking for some practical organization of watercolor supplies, keep reading for how I organize my paper, brushes, paints, and palettes.

It took me more than 2 years of watercoloring to finally purchase my first handmade watercolor paint. I’m not sure why it took me so long to look into them but I’m just now starting to discover this world of handmade watercolors.

I’m excited to finally be sharing this blog post all about my watercolor swatch cards. This post will walk you through you how I make them, what they tell me about the paints, and how I organize them for storing and easy reference.

At this point my swatch card collection contains 80 cards even though I don’t own 80 tubes of paint! More than 50% of the colors are from paint samples given to me by watercolor artist friends.

So I know you probably have some paints to swatch, so let’s get started!

Whether you consider yourself a skilled watercolor artist or a beginner, one thing is for certain: you’ve spent your fair share of time investigating watercolor supplies.

I’m also pretty sure about another thing: at some point in time you have thought to yourself, “if I just buy ‘X’ tool/supply/product, it’s going to make my art better”.

Which, if you’re a beginner, is often followed immediately by this thought: “Too bad I’m not good enough to be using ‘X’ supply yet.”

In this blog post, I’m going to share why you deserve to use better quality or professional grade supplies, even if you’re “just a beginner”.

Amazon has made a lot of things available at just the push of a button and while it can be dangerous for the wallet, it does mean access to many art supplies at affordable prices. Not to mention, miscellaneous tools and supplies that I find myself using quite a lot. 

Today I’m going to share with you what I think are the best watercolor supplies you can get on Amazon.com.

If there was one watercolor supply I would say you shouldn’t skimp on, it would be paper. Good watercolor paper is, hands-down, the most important factor to success with watercolors. I think there are many others out there that would agree with this statement! I’ve read it for myself on numerous blogs, in facebook comments, and even when chatting with fellow painters.

Once you experience quality watercolor paper, it’s like a lightbulb goes off and you realize: THIS is why people love watercolor painting.

So if you’re just getting started with watercolors maybe you’ve come across terms like stretching, paper-weight, blocks, and sizing, and it seems unclear where you should start and WHY these are important. So I’ve broken down the basic aspects that are important in watercolor papers below along with a graphic summary. Hopefully this will help make sense of it so you can make more informed decisions when choosing your paper!

One of the questions that I get asked the most is what type of paints I use. I have to start by saying that the type of watercolor paints you use come down to personal preference at the end of the day - like most things in life. But, what I can do, is share with you what my experiences have been and what my preferences are.

Now, if you’re looking for someone who has tested out a bunch of paints from a bunch of different brands and is here to lay out all the nitty gritty details and comparison notes for you…you probably should stop reading right now.