I bought a new sketchbook the other day. It was such fun to choose the right one, and to come back to the studio and open up the packaging and flip through all the perfect white pages that are for me alone to wreck. I was giddy all day. It really is the simple joys in life, and I think we tend to forget to revisit the things we loved as children.

I used to work at an art supply shop, and the other staff members were the best comrades for geeking out over art supplies. When this wee travel-sized watercolour set came in, two of us snapped them up. I’m not a watercolourist, so I wondered if I’d just gotten jazzed about the packaging or something. It’s become one of my absolute treasures, and has been with me to New York, Dubai, Australia, New Zealand, and Hong Kong.

Here’s a tip for customising your watercolour set. Pull out the pans of colours you don’t use and squeeze in another colour from Daniel Smith, Holbein or Winsor Newton and let it dry. This also works for cheap & cheerful sets. Customising it gives you higher quality paint.

A note on pigments.  If you’re working with a budget (who isn’t these days?), I recommend skimping on the earthy colours like:

Burnt/Raw Umber
Blacks
Vert de Terre, Sap Green
Burnt/Raw Sienna
White

Splurge on one of each of the primaries:

Magenta/Rose Madder
Cobalt Blue
Lemon Yellow

Teach yourself to mix these colours to make almost any other colour. There are many lovely books on the subject of colour mixing, but what it comes down to is a whole lot of trial and error. And that’s half the fun, no?

~ By the way…~
Rose Madder is made from actual roses and smells wonderful. Next time you’re in an art shop, open up a tube and have a sniff! You won’t regret it.