I got a new set of Faber Castell Polychromos colored pencils for the Pet Portraits in Colored Pencils class at the Community College of Beaver County.

One of the easiest ways to drop into creative mode, I find is to simply test out your new supplies by making a chart with the name of each color and a sample of that color. This process of swatching shows you exactly what color each pencil or paint type is.  

Now that you are familiar with your new supplies, ideas pop up for sketchbook projects.  In my case, the daylilies were blooming right off the front porch where I sat in the late afternoon sun.

I hope you'll try swatching your art supplies.  Perhaps you have some colored pencils or watercolors, or a set of markers.  Testing them out can be your entryway into creativity!

Discover New Possibilities with Color Swatching!

I have been reading a wonderful book on the power of watercolor sketching to bring you joy & liven up your art practice.

One of the first activities author Jen Russell-Smith outlines is making a color chart.  She recommends it as a way to fill the first blank page in a sketch journal.

I had a small travel set of Winsor & Newton watercolors I had gotten while on board the Queen Mary 2 last summer.  I wanted to test this little travel palette out, so I created a grid of squares using a waterproof, black pen, and then put a dot of each color across the top and down the left side of the grid.  

I also filled in each pure color in the diagonal where the color meets up with itself from the top and the left side.

I mixed every color with every other color as they met up on the grid.  

A surprisingly useful bunch of colors resulted!  For instance, when I mixed Sap Green and Chinese White, I discovered the color I've been seeking to paint the silvery green foliage of Autumn Olive bushes.

And, did you know that when you mix  Pthalo Green and Burnt Sienna, you get a lovely deep forest green?  I discovered these colors and more!

At the bottom of the page, I tested out 8 of my 12 colors, painting a concentrated swatch at the top, then watering down each color towards the bottom.

Watercolors look different in the pan than they do after they dry on the paper, so this swatching page will come in handy as I paint and sketch with this travel kit.  It's amazing to me the amount and variety of colors I can create from this tiny, 2 1/2" by 5" kit.

Get to know the potential in your watercolor palette with this great swatching project!

Discovering Summer's Greens

With summer in its full glory, I've been exploring all the shades of green I can create.  I purchased several new tubes of Winsor & Newton watercolor paint, and there's nothing like swatching new color combinations to discover cool, warm, muddy to rich verdant greens.  

If you ever find yourself artistically stuck in neutral and looking for a good warm-up to get you creating, color-mixing is a no-pressure adventure that can help you understand colors.  Some artists keep entire journals of just colors they've discovered so they can refer back to them.

When I had discerned the 24 colors I wanted to work with in the field, I found a leak-proof folding palette to carry them in.

Why not celebrate the greens of summer by mixing all of your yellows and earth tones with all of your blues?  Then mix your greens with your yellows, blues and earth tones to see what you get.  

Happy color mixing!