Palette Detective: Watercolor Mixes for "Nasturtium" Botanical

 
In watercolor, it's not about the paint color, it's about the colors you mix. "Nasturtium" analysis. | VanillaArts.com
 
 

Colorers tend to use color names as a security blanket

What colors did you use on this project?

What's the marker list for that image?

What's your favorite red blending combination?

Admittedly, this has always been a hard thing for me to wrap my brain around.

I totally understand that using the same exact marker or pencil colors as the instructor increases the odds that a student will be able to duplicate the look of a class project... but it seems to me that holding the same supplies in your hand is only about 20% of the necessary information.

This is especially hard for crafters, people who are used to working with detailed supply lists and step by step tutorials. 

I get it. You want specifics, lots and lots and lots of specifics.

But I'm warning you. The next time I'm up in the bell tower ranting at the top of my voice, this is what I'll be yelling-

It's not the colors you use, it's how you use them!

It's not the name on the tube of paint that matters, it's what you do with it. | VanillaArts.com

Write that down and tack it on your craft room cork board. Tie a string around your finger to remember it. Tattoo it onto your dog's forehead so that you see it multiple times daily.

I can tell you every single color that I use on a project. I can list all minute details right down to the UPC code and link to the best price on the internet. And yet that tells you virtually nothing.

It's especially true with paint

Very few painters use color straight out of the tube.

For my watercolor classes, it's not enough for me to tell you what brands and what color paints I used. If you want to duplicate my look, you need to understand the mixes I make and their concentration levels.

I saw a photo on instagram a few weeks ago

The watercolorist had captioned it something along the lines of "Isn't my palette almost as pretty as the painting?"

And she was right. Her palette was absolutely beautiful. But the more I stared at it, the more I understood her painting. Her palette told me what colors she was mixing and I could trace the mixes on her palette right back to specific areas of her project.

Her palette was a road map to recreating her artwork.

And that idea has been brewing in the back of my mind for weeks now.

Here's "Nasturtium":

"Nasturtium" a beginner watercolor project for H2Oh! class. Teaching marker students to apply their coloring skills to watercolor paints. | VanillaArts.com

And here's my palette, which was clean when I started:

Green watercolor mixes used in "Nasturtium". Teaching marker colorers to apply their skills to watercolor paints. | VanillaArts.com
Orange watercolor mixes used in "Nasturtium". Teaching marker colorers to apply their skills to watercolor paints. | VanillaArts.com
 

Now be a palette detective

The greens are mixes of:

  • OH Sap Green

  • DS Hansa Light

  • MG Prussian Blue

The oranges* are mixes of:

  • DS Hansa Light

  • DS Pyrrol Scarlet

  • DS Carbazole Violet

  • sometimes I instinctively grab bits of MG Quin Red or Rose to brighten things

* remember that I shade last, so some of these oranges have now been neutralized by the violet. They appear dirtier than they did when I made my original passes on the petals.

We can make palette shots a regular thing

If you think it helps.

Thoughts?

Can't wait to paint with you tonight!!!

 

Nasturtium

Designed for watercolor but perfect for Copic or colored pencil.

This full page digital image is an original stamp used in my H2Oh! watercoloring classes in 2016. It was designed as a full page stamp (8.5" x 11") but can be scaled down if desired.

"Nasturtium" has wide open areas with no texture marks and is perfect for colored pencil, alcohol markers, watercolor... your options are endless!

Lettering is not included in the digital stamp as it was hand lettered by me after the project was completed.

This stamp was taught as a watercolor class, therefore I do not have a recipe guide to include in the stamp package. You can view my “work in progress” photos for this project on Instagram here.

Nasturtium FC Promo.jpg
 
VanillaArts.com

Head to Head: Blending Cardstocks- Cryogen versus X-Press It

 
Testing Blending Cardstocks- Cryogen vs XPress It | VanillaArts.com | #coloredpencil #howtocolor #realisticcoloring
 
 

Nobody rides a bicycle on the beach...

Bikes are great; you can go a lot of places on a bicycle.

But if you're sunning your buns at one end of the beach and the daiquiri bar is way the heck down at the other end... it's highly unlikely that you're going to use peddle power to cross a mile of sugar sand beach.

Bicycles don't work very well in the desert; they're not so great underwater and I'd hate to be left with only a bike during a Michigan January.

Now I'm not beating up on bikes and bicycle enthusiasts. I love my bike.

But only an idiot tries to use a bike in a snowstorm. It simply isn't designed to do what you're asking it to do.

 

Smart people match the tool to the task

That includes paper.

Especially when you're working with Copics and colored pencil. Trying to blend alcohol markers on a dollar store drawing pad is like trying to peddle your way down Daytona Beach.

You're not using the right tool to facilitate good blending.

Sadly, Cryogen went out of business in 2022. I’m keeping this article published as an example of what to look for in good marker paper and how to test paper on your own.

 
 

For years, I've used x-press it blending card 

Not just faithfully, I've used it exclusively. 

For my style of marker painting, it simply works best.

Ink stays wet on the surface of X-Press It paper slightly longer than with other blending cardstocks. That extra wet-time allows for better blending. I see significant improvement when I move students from their preferred paper to X-Press It.

 

But X-Press It has one major drawback

I combine marker with colored pencil. The combination of wet and dry gives me more depth, texture, and mark versatility than is possible with just marker alone. 

I love my X-Press It. The problem is that X-PI is everything a colored pencil paper should not be.

X-Press It is super slick with a slightly resistant surface. Way smoother than hot press, it's Bing Crosby driving a Zamboni eating butter kind of smooth.

Meanwhile colored pencil likes things gritty. Artists call it tooth; a good colored pencil paper has tiny jags and crevices which grab hold and collect pencil pigment as you color.

X-Press It cardstock is as toothless as the starting line-up for the 1972 Red Wings. Trying to color with colored pencil on X-PI is like spreading grape jelly onto a greased pig. About 70% of what you lay down ain't gonna stick.

So not to make light of Sophie's Choice, but at the start of every project, I'm usually standing at the train station trying to pick between X-Press It for Markers or Vellum Bristol for colored pencil.

 

Then I rediscovered Cryogen

A student once handed me some sheets of "sparkle paper" in class. I'm always up for trying a new paper, but she presented it as a marker paper, something another Copic instructor had recommended.

It was a nice cardstock, smooth with an interesting pearly flake embedded in the pulp. I made a few test swatches and no angelic chorus descended from the heavens. I decided I liked X-Press It better and filed the Cryogen away in my drawer of assorted paper.

Time passed.

I cleaned out that drawer last month and came across some unmarked sheets of cardstock. As I'm mentally berating the wheel running hamster who lives in my head for not labeling the paper... my fingers... they were feeling the paper. I was actually petting the paper.

 
Cryogen vs XPress It head to head | VanillaArts.com
 

And the hamster started dancing

He danced and sang because we were petting a marker cardstock with a bit of tooth.

Holy Grail anyone?

I've been playing with sparkle paper Cryogen recently. I'm pretty pleased.

I wouldn't say Cryogen White is the answer to ALL my problems but it does get the Nazi off my back. Here's what I've found.

 

X-Press It- a superior marker blending card

  • Full Name: X-Press It Blending Card

  • Surface: ultra hot-press, feels coated but isn't

  • Color: bright white

  • Weight: about 110 lbs.

  • Tooth: very little

  • Thirst: coats well on first pass, no excessive ink usage

  • Alcohol Ink Blendability: extended wet-time makes for easy and amazing blends

  • Vividness: colors are bold, no visible changes upon drying.

  • Bleed (ink pulled by paper fibers beyond stamp lines): hardly noticeable

  • Leak-through (to back of paper): only after 3 coats

  • Water Damage: exposure to water will damage paper irreparably. Surface will buckle, then separate from core, can peel off.

  • Colored Pencil: accepts a first coat with a sharp pencil. Hard to layer or blend, must press harder than normal to collect color. Color can smear.

 
"Go Fish" colored on X-Press It Blending Card | VanillaArts.com
 

Cryogen- a balanced all purpose cardstock

  • Full Name: Cryogen Curious Metallics

  • Surface: hot-press

  • Color: "white" but is actually a creamy, yellow tinged white

  • Weight: 89 lbs.

  • Tooth: light tooth

  • Thirst: coats well on first pass, draws more ink than X-Press It

  • Alcohol Ink Blendability: moderate, some strokes remain visible after second pass.

  • Vividness: some colors mute slightly as they dry.

  • Bleed (ink pulled by paper fibers beyond stamp lines): light bleed but controllable

  • Leak-through (to back of paper): after 2nd coat

  • Water Damage: a light spray did not affect paper. A good soaking caused buckling and slight swelling. Swelling disappeared when dry but buckle remained. No peeling or bubbling.

  • Colored Pencil: accepts 2-3 coats of colored pencil, waxy pencils blended well. Easy to color softly with no visible stroke lines.

 
"Go Fish" Colored on Cryogen White | VanillaArts.com
 

Here's a side by side:

X-Press it on top, Cryogen on bottom. Creamy color of Cryogen is more noticeable in real life.

Cryogen vs. XPress It cardstocks. Marker vs colored pencil cardstock | VanillaArts.com

Overall, a move to Cryogen means that I sacrifice some marker blending ability in order to gain pencil blending ability.

  • You can see some unblendable marker strokes in the blue stripes just before the tail on the Cryogen. The B37 was especially stubborn.

  • B99 looks more deep and vibrant on the X-PI but it's only noticeable when side by side.

  • B32 (lightest blue in the stripes) is noticeably lighter and more even on X-Press It.

  • The difference in aqua colors here is solely due to the yellow of Cryogen making all colors look warmer.

  • Blue pencil over yellow marker on X-PI looks muddy. Same on Cryogen looks more subtle and pleasing.

  • Not only does pencil "stick" better to Cryogen, white gel pen adheres more smoothly

So am I a Cryogen Fan now?

Maybe.

I'll still teach with X-Press It because I never want to place hurdles in front of my students. Blending is so much easier with X-PI that I can't justify the switch for my beginners and casual colorers.

But for any project (personal or with advanced students) that requires more than 50% colored pencil, I'll be using Cryogen.

 
 
 

Watercolor: Make a Peerless Watercolor Palette

 
Make a travel palette from Peerless Watercolor Swatches | VanillaArts.com
 
 

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.

Make a Peerless Travel Palette | VanillaArts.com

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

 
Make a Peerless Travel Palette | VanillaArts.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.

Make a Peerless Travel Palette | VanillaArts.com

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.

Make a Peerless Travel Palette | VanillaArts.com

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!

Make a Peerless Travel Palette | VanillaArts.com

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). 

 

 

 
 
Make a Peerless Travel Palette | VanillaArts.com

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.

 
Make a Peerless Travel Palette | VanillaArts.com

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.

 
Make a Peerless Travel Palette | VanillaArts.com

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.

 
Make a Peerless Travel Palette | VanillaArts.com

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!

Make a Peerless Travel Palette | VanillaArts.com

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...

 
 
Make a Peerless Travel Palette | VanillaArts.com

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.

Make a Peerless Travel Palette | VanillaArts.com

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...

Make a Peerless Travel Palette | VanillaArts.com

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. 

Make a Peerless Travel Palette | VanillaArts.com
Make a Peerless Travel Palette | VanillaArts.com

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!

 
Make a Peerless Travel Palette | VanillaArts.com
Make a Peerless Watercolor swatch palette | VanillaArts.com

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.