Major art supplies haul

I have been waiting for this order for over a month. It was held up in the pandemic lockdown. Finally!

A basic set of Gouache

Fingers crossed that this works out. I have heard mixed reviews on the brand. It is less than half the price of the major brands though.

An amazing looking watercolor palette

This looks like one of the best options available. I will be filling it with W&N Cotman colors. Sometimes I feel guilty about all the palettes I have purchased (6 of them now) but then I realize they are all in currently use except one.

New sketchbook! And papers

Looking forward to using this spiral bound sketchbook with mixed media paper. Right now I am using a bound cartridge paper book that was only $5. It isn't very good with water at all as you might guess. Not pictured: Tracing paper.

More drawing supplies

India ink, ink droppers, bamboo pen, gum eraser a couple of small brushes. Not pictured: Erasing shield.

More Cotman colors

I am upgrading from the Staedtler student set ($16.99 for 24) to these ($4.99-$9.99 for 1). They are still student grade but are a big step up. I have about 21 Cotman colors now.

Comments

Work from "101 Watercolor techniques" - Exercise 005

This exercise was a bit of a struggle for a beginner. Believe it or not the result below is the third attempt. The point of the exercise was to get a result of depth on the paper using only analogous colours and without using color gradation. I am sure I learned something from it. What I think I struggled with among other things was "water control" - keeping the water within the small leaf areas from running. Learning: As I went along I had a little bit more freedom with the strokes. I started to notice how the exercise author was using negative space and tried to replicate it. \

Work from Everyday Watercolor - Day 4 - Abstract composition

Another challenging exercise. This time working on day 4 of the popular book Everyday Watercolor . This seemed to take way longer than expected by the author. It took time to pick out the 6 colours. I like the set I picked well enough but don't love them. The exercise challenge is to balance warm and cool colors, stay within lines and practice painting right next to previous washes of paint. This seems to work on water control and gauging drying time. I also got a bit of practice fixing mistakes. I had a couple of large blooms I wanted to fix and one or two drops that got outside of lines. I was very happy with the Winsor and Newton Cotman #6 brush this time. The springy tip did a great job cleaning up tiny edges. Previously I had issues with this brush dumping little bits of water and the tip "squaring off" sort of but not this time. Maybe it was the amount of paint I was using? Learning: Choosing and using a larger palette (6+ colors) Water control Fixing mistakes b...

Work from "101 Watercolor techniques"

Today I did two projects from the "101 Watercolor techniques" book. Both turned out quite well with some caveats. Number 3 - Cool monochromes The exercise is about mixing Burnt Sienna and Ultramarine to get variations in color. I struggled to get enough reddish brown to display so I had to do a second wash in places to get a nice final result. That was a bit of a cop out but I figured by struggling I had learned a bit of the lesson anyway. Number 4 - Warm monochromes This one is about letting two warm colors mix on the paper. In retrospect I should have done more of that with number 3 as well. This exercise also mostly worked except I didn't get the veins painted until the yellow paint was getting to dry. As a result they look a bit added on - as they are.

Crashing water

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