Watercolor: Make a Peerless Watercolor Palette

My goal is to do more personal projects this year...

As a teacher, it's really easy to fall into the curriculum trap where everything you produce is either a teaching reference or a prospective lesson.

So my solution to this hole I'm sitting in is simple: get the heck out of my studio! Now that the weather's warmer, I'm forcing myself to unplug and head outdoors for some soul-building field work.

In fancy art circles, we call working out-of-doors "en plein air" which roughly translates to "you can't take your 900 pound ceramic watercolor palette with you".

Yep, if it's going to be me and my dog drawing/chasing ducks in the park, I can't exactly drag along my studio paints.

So I went shopping- a little Home Depot, a little Amazon, and a quick stop at Peerlesscolorlabs.com

Here's my new travel kit

(warning: affiliate links ahead...)

First off, I needed a bag.

I know that sounds like putting the sleigh before the horse but because I knew the palette could be any size, I figured I'd find a great carrying case and then create the perfect palette to fit.

I found this bag on Amazon. If it came in red, I'd declare it utterly perfect. The pockets are deep, it has pencil & brush storage up front, and these handy little flaps to keep your inside stuff inside.

The best part about this bag is something I didn't realize until Mr. Fed-Ex dropped it off on my doorstop- this bag has a hard board backing, sewn inside the back panel.

Once I'm on location and have emptied out my bag, the bag can lay on my lap as a mini-desk!

What's perfecter than perfect?

Oh, if only it came in red...

Next up, Peerless Watercolors!

There are lots of portable watercolor kits on the market. I do own and love my Winsor Newton watercolor makers, but I do not like juggling multiple markers in one hand while I paint with the other.

And yes, the practical part of me thought about buying a small empty travel palette. Because I use tube watercolors, it would have been very easy (and economical) to simply fill a smaller travel palette with my favorite watercolor paints.

But as I said earlier, I'm in a rut and doing the same ol' things with my same ol' stuff (only outdoors) really wasn't jingling my bells. So I ordered a 60 (they now have 80!) color set of Peerless Watercolor swatches.

Peerless swatches are little cards embedded with transparent and vibrant watercolor. They work just like the watercolor coloring books we had growing up. Simply touch a card with a wet paintbrush to rehydrate the color, then paint your project. Because the color is intense and concentrated, you don't need to carry around a big swatch.

The problem with Peerless cards is that they arrive like a deck of cards... NOT very travel friendly. I Googled up a storm to see how other crafters were storing their Peerless. Most people are using photo albums with 2-6 colors per page. With 60 colors, that means lots of page flipping and wet swatches touching each other and generally getting nasty. Oh my sweet heavens, spare me that kind of color contamination!

I also wanted a white mixing surface. I almost never use a color straight up as is.

Hello Home Depot!

This is corrugated PVC plastic. You'll find it in the same aisle as plexiglass and sheets of replacement glass for windows and picture frames. If you're not handy enough to enter the hallowed halls of Home Depot, Amazon has the same thing.

This stuff is sturdy, lightweight, and pretty inexpensive.  I paid $5.48 for a 18 x 24 inch rectangle. That was enough for one, three page travel palette (plus scraps). 

Assembly:

I've used this plastic before for other projects and it cuts very easily with a craft knife (this is the best one ever, it doesn't roll away!!!).

I cut 3 panels at 7 x 10 inches. That's large enough to hold 30 swatches on a single page and it fits very easily into the bag. I could have gone slightly larger but then the math for the swatch sizes got weird.

artist + weird math = great angst

A T-square, a large self-healing cutting mat, and a brand new knife blade make this part of the job very easy and precise.

The cut edges are not sharp but because I'll be handling this palette a lot, I wanted a more finished edge.

I ran a line of white electrical tape around all four sheets and burnished it down with a bone folder. The electrical tape may shift over time and with wear, so I'm not thrilled with this solution... but it works for now.

Plus the mitered edges makes my inner OCD patient smile.

I used my Cinch machine to bind the three panels together with .75" wire. Cinch wire cuts easily with wire nippers.

The plastic sheets are 4mm which was a smidgen too thick to fit into the Cinch but I was able to squish just the end area with a bone folder. Then each compressed sheet slid in very easily.

I bound my palette along the short edge. That's another big difference between my palette and the other tutorials out there. I wanted long and narrow so that I can clip it closer to my project. I don't want the wind catching a tall palette like a sail when I'm outdoors.

Here's where my palette starts to differ greatly from other internet tutorials.

Because I intend to mix colors and because I know the swatches will be damp when I close up my palette, I wanted space between the swatches and the mixing surface.

Even if not wet, these swatches can contaminate each other if they make contact color-to-color.

Plus, I suspect that wet swatches pressed up next to plastic means they'll dry really slowly and could grow mold or fungus over time. Ugh!

Little adhesive backed vinyl bumper feet solve this problem and insure that even when folded, the swatches never touch the middle page mixing surface.

Here's an end shot of the closed palette. The pages all have a nice air gap.

Yes, it takes a hyper-critical perfectionist weirdo to think of these things...

Yes, I want Beans!

Here's the swatch cutting process.

Each of my swatches are 1/6 of a card, adhered to a sheet of watercolor paper with Tombow tape. When a swatch wears out, I'll rip it off and replace it with a new 1/6 piece.

I left room next to each swatch for the color name and a wash sample.

I used double sided Gorilla tape (super sticky stuff) to stick the entire card to the palette. One card on the inside of the front cover, one card on the inside of the back cover. The middle sheet (with the feet) is left blank as that will be my mixing surface.

Warm colors on one page.

Cool colors on the other.  Yes, I'm missing a color. It was supposed to be 60 colors but they sent two Amethyst cards. I'm still not sure what color I'm missing...

Here is my palette at work.

For smaller projects, I can tape the watercolor paper right to the mixing page. For outdoors, I will clip the entire palette to the side of my journal.

I'm not happy with the way the paint beads up in some areas, that makes mixing harder. I'll pull out some 3000 grit sandpaper later (super fine for polishing jewelry) and rough up the surface slightly. 

Here's my travel bag loaded up with supplies.

I've got room for 2-3 journals here. Or I can throw in my case of Winsor & Newton Watercolor Markers.

Add some water to my flask and I'm all ready to go!

Yep, I even made a label for the front cover.

That's it, one travel palette chock-full of pretty Peerless Watercolors in a grab-'n-go messenger style bag.

I'm all set to go a-painting in the wilds of Michigan...

... if only it wasn't 42 degrees outside.

Copic Multiliner vs Pigma Micron: Does It Matter?

Most of my beginners bring Micron pens to class

Even though the supply list specifically states "Copic Multiliner".

Does it matter?

It matters to your artwork!

I'm not a one-tool-works-for-everyone kind of teacher but there is a reason why my Copic Multiliners are worn and well loved while my Micron pens gather dust in a bottom drawer reserved for pencil stubs, old Bic pens, and stray paperclips.

Now I don't rant and rage if someone pulls out a Micron pen in class. I get it- most beginners have used Microns for previous projects and why should you buy a new black pen when you have a bunch of 'em already?

And frankly, it's rare to find a craft shop or art store that carries more than a few stray Multiliners; meanwhile the Microns fly out the door like Olympic sprinters being chased by rabid cheetahs. If you want a Multiliner, you've got to go the extra mile to hunt 'em down.

But in my experience, the two products are not interchangeable. It matters which brand of pen you use.

Four reasons why I do not use Micron pens:

1. Erasers can lift Micron ink

Admittedly, if you never draw & ink your own images, you may never notice this flaw. But trust me, I've banged my head against the wall on more than one occasion.

And it happens on the kind of smooth papers markers like best.

See that light zone down the center of my inking? That's not a creatively placed highlight. That's what happens when you run a white eraser over an area inked with Micron pen. That was 3 passes with a Pentel Hi-Polymer Eraser, a very gentle type of eraser.

With Micron pens, an inker who erases their pencil guide lines has to go back and re-ink the erasure sites to build back up the solid color.

NOT FUN.

2. Copic Ink can cause Micron to bleed

I've seen a few blogs and YouTube videos that claim otherwise. But here's the catch- what paper and what Copic ink are they using?

The brand of paper matters a lot for ink adhesion.

While you can sometimes get away with coloring over the top of Micron ink with your Copics, the Microns really will bleed. It's not a Napoleonic War kind of bloody mess but a bleed is a bleed and it's not a good thing.

All 8 test swatches received 4 passes with Copic colorless blender. The blending solution was loaded into a water brush because I knew what was coming and I didn't want to ruin my colorless blender nib.

The bleeding on both X-Press It and Gina K cardstock was minimal. You can only see it on close inspection and the bleed would be easily missed if I were using a colored Copic ink instead of clear. But the tip of my waterbrush was dark gray which means that your Copic nibs would pick up the Micron ink too.

The bleed was pretty significant on both brands of marker/layout paper that I own. And because I draw all my digi stamps on layout paper, this means no Microns for me!

So if you're using a Micron pen to touch up your stamp or add details, don't run the risk of ruining your project with ink incompatibility. Save the Micron work for dead last!

Yes, I want Beans!

3. I hate the grip on Micron pens

Okay, this is a personal problem and given that I actually have been struck by lightening, I'll admit that my life has challenges which yours may not.

Whiny baby time: Microns have a sharp ridge right where I hold the pen. That ridge digs into my finger, even though I do not use a death-grip. Call me a wimp but Micron pens hurt!

I signed my name six times on scrap paper and this is the dent it left. That was less than a minute of work. It usually takes me about 20 minutes to ink an image.

No way I'm holding a Micron pen for that long. Not happening.

4. Zero Shades of Gray...

I'm not a fan of black coloring book type lines on my coloring images and even when I do work with a black stamp, I almost always add my own details using a gray Multiliner rather than a black one.

Gray is magical ink; it's a chameleon color. Use a gray pen to add veins to a green leaf or stripes to a green eye and it looks like you used a green Multiliner. Use it over something blue and it looks like you used a blue pen. Gray morphs and changes based upon whatever color is underneath it.

For adding subtle or gentle details, gray is king. It's the only color I grab for drop shadows. Black is harsh and detracting while gray sings beautifully, on key- no matter what the key, every single time.

And guess what?

Micron doesn't come in gray.

<face palm>

Different inks. Different adhesion. Different compatibility. Different housing & grip area. Different color palettes.

This is why I own 28 Multiliners and only 4 Micron pens.

And this is why my class supply lists always specifically call for Copic Multiliners.

You can find my newest favorite Copic friendly fineliners here:

Yes, I want Beans!

Black Erasers: Erase Mistakes Without Damaging your Paper

“Which way you ought to go depends on where you want to get to...” 

There's a certain logic to what the cat said to Alice. You need to know where you're going before you decide how to get there.

When you make a mistake with colored pencils, there's not a one size fits all solution. Smart colorers evaluate the damage and decide upon the path that gets them around the mistake without creating a ton of damage in the process.

Erasers are not magical. They can't remove the whole mistake. They can only remove enough to get you back on the correct path.

An eraser is not a time machine, it won't take you back to the day before you made the mistake.

Huh. That's a rather important statement. So let me say that again, in bolder, bigger letters:

It’s an eraser, not a time machine

We're talking about colored pencil here. Just colored pencil. Because if you're here looking for a marker eraser, boy, are you fresh out of luck. You can minimize marker damage with a colorless blender but you're never going to do more than camouflage your marker mistakes.

But back to colored pencil- and for that, I'm sorry break this to you, but there's not going to be a perfect erasing solution here either.

You can minimize the damage but you're never going to take yourself back to fresh clean paper. Erasers are not the stuff of H.G. Wells.

I think part of the problem is because we call them colored pencils. When you hear pencils, you think graphite and for every graphite pencil, there's a pretty good eraser, right?

Now if we were more accurate and we started calling colored pencils what they really are... I'd suggest calling them  freekishly-stubborn-sticks-of-color-that-ain't-goin'-nowhere, but that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue... But if we really did call them FSSoCTAGN, then people would stop expecting to be able to remove every single colored pencil mistake they ever make.

A colored pencil eraser can't take you back to Eden, it can only make you feel a little less miserable about goofing up.

Let's review the most important rule of erasing mistakes:

First, do no harm.

Remember, paper has tooth and tooth is essential to good colored pencil coloring. Tooth is what grabs your colored pencil pigment and holds onto it. Colored pencil doesn't work well on glass, does it? It doesn't work well on glassy papers either. Tooth is vital to the coloring process.

ALL ERASERS DAMAGE TOOTH

There's no way to avoid it. Any rubbing, any friction, any eraser will flatten out the paper tooth and thus make it harder to color over the erasure zone.

So when you make a mistake, start with the lightest, most paper friendly eraser you can find. You don't have to pull out a hand grenade when a fluffy bunny will work.

Made a mistake? Start here:

1. Sticky Tack Eraser- this is your fluffy bunny eraser. It lightly lifts color without damaging your paper. Read more about sticky tack and how to use it here.

2. White Polymer Eraser- if the fluffy bunny doesn't work, try your new best friend. White erasers are non-abrasive and grit free. That means they rub without sanding away much of the paper surface. Most of your mistakes can be removed with a white eraser. Read about white erasers here and here.

But if the fluffy bunny can't handle the mistake and your new best friend doesn't make a dent in it, what should you do?

That's when you call in the big boy. BUT ONLY AFTER YOU'VE TRIED THE STICKY TACK AND THE WHITE ERASER!

Who is the big boy?

Meet the Black Polymer Eraser

They're made by several companies, Factis is the kind that just happens to be at the cash register display of my favorite local art store.

Pentel, Faber Castell, Staedtler, and Tombow also make good black erasers. The one you want to avoid is the Black Pearl variety.

Just remember the Johnny Depp movie, the Curse of the Black Pearl. That's easy to remember.

A black pearl won't ruin your life but it is way too abrasive for our needs. Save it for the class room.

By the way, that goes for white pearls and pink pearls too. They're all school erasers, not art erasers.

Yes, I want Beans!

What's special about black erasers?

Well, he's a body builder compared to our other erasers.

We started with the weakest eraser on purpose, but sometimes you need more muscle.

In the eraser world, abrasive grit is muscle. Grit is what's ultimately going to remove the mistake.

But it's a trade-off- grit gets the job done but it'll also damage the tooth. So we want something muscular but with control.

We want a smooth operator; a big guy with some sensitivity. We want don't want the Terminator, we want the Kindergarten Cop. That's the black polymer eraser.

Here's a sample of each eraser at work on a thick and heavy coat of Prismacolor Premier pencil.

Sticky tack lightens the area. It doesn't erase, it takes the sting off the mistake. Once you've lightened the mistake, you can layer on the correct color. Prismacolor is fairly opaque, this gentle re-coloring process is usually all the correction you need.

But if if isn't enough, try the white eraser. It's stronger than the fluffy bunny sticky tack but you're still preserving the tooth of the paper. Lift what you can and then recolor the zone.

The black eraser is your last resort. It removes most of the color, but it will never get it all. Remember, we are deliberately avoiding the hand grenade in order to keep as much tooth intact as possible.

The black eraser has a slight bit of grit so it can remove most of the color. It doesn't have enough grit to dig down into all the crevices.

Think of what's leftover after a black eraser as the Cheshire Cat's smile... the old pigment is still there but it's not enough to get in your way anymore.

Black polymer erasers remove just enough color to allow you a re-try. The downside is that if you over-rub the area with a black eraser, you will damage the paper. That's why it's the eraser of last resort. You never grab the black eraser first; use it only when the fluffy bunny and the best friend white eraser aren't lifting enough color to control the mistake.

And no, it won't leave a black smudge on your paper. I wouldn't do that to you! Good black erasers erase cleanly.

Here's the rundown on black polymer erasers:

Alternate Names-

Black PVC eraser, black polymer eraser, black poly eraser

Brands- 

Factis, Pentel, Faber Castell, Staedtler, and Tombow

Defining Features-

A rubbery eraser with a slight bit of grit, black in color but erases cleanly

Best used on-

Works great on graphite projects. Good on wax based colored pencil marks and other media that sit on top of the paper surface. Will not work on liquids like ink or paint that absorb into paper fibers.

Price Range-

Prices vary, usually under $4 per eraser. Sold in multi-packs

Available at-

Some art stores, some craft stores, most online art supply retailers

So to recap: No time machines, only fluffy bunnies, BFFs, and Cheshire cats... 

We're either talking in code or we're all mad here.

Why Color Lists and Marker Recipes Hurt your Coloring

I've got a great recipe to share with you today!

Amy's Amazing Lemon Meringue Pie:

• Baking Powder

• Butter

• Cornstarch

• Cream of Tartar

• Eggs

• Flour

• Lemons

• Salt

• Shortening

• Sugar

• Vanilla

• Vinegar

• Water

Print this recipe and make a great pie today!

What's wrong with my recipe?

You mean you can't make a pie with my recipe?

But I gave you all the ingredients!

Okay, okay. I'll admit that my recipe might be missing a few details, but you're used to that, right? You're completely capable of filling in the gaps!

What? Wait, you're not?

Then why do you have a Pinterest board that looks like this?

Let me get this straight:

• You have no psychic powers

• You spend long hours searching Pinterest for marker recipes

• Some of you have so many recipes that you've subdivided the collection into boards for "Hair", "Skin", "Animals", etc

• You spend your hard-earned money buying markers from pinned recipes

• You mentally beat yourself up when a recipe doesn't work, because you assume the recipe is good... therefore, it must be you that stinks

• When one recipe doesn't work for you, you pin-shop for more similar recipes

Why are you torturing yourself?

Stop.

Just stop.

You are wasting your time. You are pinning the wrong thing.

You are riding a merry-go-round in the third circle of hell. No good will come of this; you're just going round and round and round and round.

The problem is NOT you. The problem is NOT your coloring  skills.

It's the recipe that sucks.

Proportions, application order, stroke quality, and paper saturation are far more important than ink color.

Please go back and read that sentence one more time.

No, really go back and read it again. I'll wait.

Good. Now let me explain.

You and I could have the same 5 markers and the same image stamped on the same paper but we would each produce two completely different looking projects.

Heck, I could run this experiment all by myself and I'd produce a totally different image today than I did last Tuesday.

Clearly then, there is more to great coloring than marker recipes.

Don't believe me?

I just searched Pinterest with the following search terms: "Copic", "Blonde", and "Hair".

The resulting photo wall was 8 wide and 45 pins deep with a "see more pins" box at the bottom.

That's at least 360 different recipes for blonde hair using alcohol markers. Okay, 338 if you eliminate the pictures of Jennifer Aniston that were oddly prevalent amongst the results.

The point is that none of the resulting projects are ugly. They all look fridge-worthy, even frame-worthy.

So assuming some recipe overlap, we can honestly say that there are about 300 ways to beautifully color blonde hair (with or without Jennifer Aniston's help).

Yes, I want Beans!

It is not about the ink color

Say it with me: It is not about the ink color.

Marker colors are the only information your marker recipe collection gives you. "I used YR27, YR23, E55, and BV01."

(Don't use that recipe, I just made it up a second ago. But yeah, I think I could make it work.)

What information is missing from pinned recipes?

• Did the author color light to dark or dark to light?

• Which marker(s) were used to blend?

• How often were colors blended? When?

• How many applications of each color were used?

• What was the dry time between colors?

• How long were the strokes?

• Were all strokes the same or did one color receive special treatment?

• How full were the author’s markers (yes, this makes a gigantic difference!)

• What paper did they work on?

• How saturated was the paper upon completion?

• Does the photo display true color or has it been Photoshopped?

• Did the author deliberately or accidentally omit a color from the list?

Any one of these factors can drastically alter your final results!

Yet when your project doesn't turn out like the Pinterest photograph, you beat yourself up for being a no-good talentless hack?

That's absolutely ridiculous! Yet every day, someone tries to color something they saw on Pinterest and fails. They get discouraged.

Random marker recipes are a bit evil. They set you up to fail! As the failures add up, they hurt your confidence and damage your spirit.

I met a woman last week at Hobby Lobby…

She had 3 recipes taped into a notebook. She was trying to purchase the markers listed. She asked me (I was looking at erasers, not markers) if I knew anything about substitute Copic colors.

She was prepared to plunk down good money on about 30 markers based on Pinterest recipes and the advice of a stranger who was there to buy erasers.

I helped her but I know she is beating herself up at home right now... because she needed more than a recipe list to reproduce the look of those pins.

Product Shrines- You don't usually find these in artist studios.

The big difference between artists and crafters

A lot of crafters are obsessed with supplies.

Now don't get me wrong, you talk to any artist and they'll tell you about how they have way too many #6 brushes or maybe they have three tubes of every paint Golden ever produced.

But what really excites an artist is using the product- physically getting in, getting their hands dirty, experimenting with the product. Artists are all about the process, not specific colors.

I've been to a lot of artist studios, I work in my own studio every day. Artist studios are generally shrine-free. 99% would make terrible Pinterest porn. 

On the other hand, almost every crafter has a favorite product line proudly displayed on pretty shelves (or has dreams of building a shrine someday).

Those marker recipes on Pinterest? They look a little bit like a Copic shrine to me. “Look at me, I’m an artist because I use lots of markers!”

Crafters get it backwards

Note that a quick search of "watercolor tree" (shown above) gave me a longer list of pins than my Blonde Hair + Jennifer Aniston search.

Did you notice anything? Not a single pin tells me what color of paint the artist used!

Instead, it's all about the look and the technique.

The same thing happened with "acrylic still lIfe pears".

Nobody is swapping watercolor recipes on Pinterest because anyone who has worked with watercolor for more than a few sessions knows that it's not WHAT you use but HOW you use it.

Copic collectors haven't quite made that connection yet. Maybe they will over the next few years, but for right now, most people are still overly obsessed with the markers and not the technique.

You could own all 3,580,000 Copic colors and still not produce good results.

You need to know how to use them.

Good info comes from classes, not Pinterest

If you want to color better, you need a class, not a recipe.

I don't care if it's a live class or online, it could be free on YouTube or a pay-to-download PDF packet. What good classes all have in common is that you are shown what to do with your marker and the instructor also explains why.

The golden egg lies in the technique, not the ink.

I'm not saying you should never pin a recipe. Pins can inspire you to use different markers than you might normally choose.

But they're no substitute for a good lesson. You are cheating yourself if you think you can get an education by spending 20 minutes a day on Pinterest.

Find a class, find a talented instructor, find a video channel, haunt the blogs and websites of good artists who talk about their process. That's a far better use of your time than pinning hundreds of blonde hair recipes and beating yourself upside the head when you inevitably fail.