Art Tips 2: Watercolor palettes

Anyone who watercolors can attest that a good palette is essential to the practice. 

Besides needing a place to mix new colors, the watercolorist also needs a space for simply adding water to the pigments (I mean, it's in the name). The amount of water added will determine how saturated the color is. 

The delicate nuances of color/tone variation are what make watercolor paintings so charming and interesting, so it's really important to be able to lift that pigment from the tube or cake, transfer it to a palette for mixing other pigments and water and carefully control the medium (it will create its own chaos once on the paper). 

Here are some palette choices:

Plastic palettes

 NO. Just no. 

Plastic palettes are the enemy of watercolors. 

 Plastic causes water to bead up on its surface. While this is great for rain boots, it's terrible for watercolors as it separates the pigment. The pile of color naturally pulls apart, making it harder to mix a color and causing quicker evaporation of the water. 

The frustration is causes is not worth your time.

 

 Butcher Block Trays

 I didn't even try to mix these - that was just gravity. 

 I love butcher block trays - but not for watercolor. 

While the enamel keeps the pigment in collected pools, its large open space doesn't have separated areas for keeping each color unpolluted, which can ruin a mixed palette. Keep these instead for much denser acrylics that will hold their own on the palette.

Porcelain Trays

 hello, gorgeous. 

 

 These beauties are the perfect mixing palette for watercolors. The glazed porcelain surface keeps the pigment in a bunch, the bright white color allows for clear color determination, and the separated wells allow for color purity and give you space to mix a TON of color (you can buy even larger porcelain mixing bowls for HUGE color space). Super easy to clean, and never staining - these palettes will change your life (well, maybe not. But they'll make watercoloring a lot easier).

 View more of my Art Tips series here.