Latest Posts
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An Autumn Palette 2026
It’s my favorite time of year: time to design my autumn palette! Autumn Palette 2026 I always end up changing my palette midway through the season, but here’s where I am starting. I decided to opt for a larger Folio Palette this year with 15 large pans. Top row: Middle row: Bottom row: Past Autumn…
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A Love Letter to Convenience Colors: My Floral Palette
A lot of watercolor painters who know about pigments prefer single pigment colors. At least that’s what I’ve heard and seen. I am here for all the colors, not only the pigments. I love to swatch them and to paint with them! Let me convince you with this article that convenience colors can be as…
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Unpainted Shapes: Making Color Sing Chapter 23
I’m working my way through Jeanne Dobie’s Making Color Sing. Chapter 23 is about negative painting and leaving areas of the painting white.
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I hate watercolor mixing charts
What, me, the biggest proponent in the world of watercolor mixing charts, claiming to hate them? What??? Okay, I’m not talking about all mixing charts. I’m talking about a very specific, very common type that I find unhelpful.
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Artist Palette Profiles: Brienne Brown
Brienne M. Brown is a watercolor landscape artist from Pennsylvania. She has private class subscription called Traveling Colors Studio and a free Youtube channel.
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Colorful Shadows Gallery
We declared August to be Colorful Shadows month, and recently, I asked for any images folks had painted recently keeping colorful shadows in mind. Here’s what we came up with.
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Do artistic compositions need a focal point?
In art, the focal point, or center of interest, is the spot in the scene where viewers’ eyes go first and linger longest. But what if your scene doesn’t have a specific focal point? Does it need one?
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Color Spotlight/Palette Review: Joyce’s Mother Violet
I’ve previously reviewed the palette of Joyce Hicks, as described in her book How to Paint Beautiful Watercolor Landscapes. Hicks has a brand agreement with Da Vinci Paints, who sell a couple of different Joyce Hicks themed palettes, with slight differences. The one that intrigued me most is the “Mother Violet” palette, which proposes using…
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Mix Your Own Pyrrol Crimson Hue
When exploring the quinacridone red hues, I became interested in how to mix a slightly deeper crimson, like Pyrrol Crimson (PR264).
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The two-for-one painting method!
Just a quick post to share a method I use sometimes that’s sometimes helpful: painting the same scene twice simultaneously, layer by layer.
