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Skillshare

Setting up a custom sketching palette with watercolors

via Skillshare

Overview

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In this class, we’re taking a look at how to set up and organize a custom watercolor palette for outdoor sketching.
Setting up your custom watercolor palette can be a step towards improving your painting experience, and you get to know your paints better. It also makes a lot of sense to fill your palette with the colors you like, and not just to use the random colors you get from a readymade kit.

Although this class is about setting up a palette, it's not necessarily about buying new paint! You know I'm a fan of rediscovering unused supplies and making the most of it. And that's what we will do (among many other things) in this class.


I will show you:
- how assembling your own palette with custom colors can give you better mixing results
- what kind of palettes are light and practical for outdoor use
- how different layouts for a palette can look like
- a bit of color and mixing theory, a look at primary colors
- how to read information on paint tubes
- what properties like transparency and opacity mean for your paintings
- how to decide if you should use tubes or pans
- practical tips, on rearranging palette space, filling up pans hassle-free, how to reuse spare parts, and keeping your field kit in order so it will last you a long time


Modifying and improving your palette can be an ongoing process throughout the years, so I invite both beginners and experienced painters to take a closer look at their watercolor kit.

At the end of this class, you'll have the knowledge to set up a custom watercolor palette fitting exactly your needs, or to modify an existing palette you might already have. If you are passionate or curious about watercolor, it's worth a look to take a closer look at your palette, and I hope you'll be inspired to set up your own palette by this class.

I’m Julia, an illustrator and field sketcher. Thank you for joining me.

If you'd like to know the specific pigments I used for the smaller sketching palette that can be seen throughout the course, read more on my blog:
https://juliabausenhardt.com/updates-to-my-palette-in-2019-new-favorites/

Syllabus

  • Introduction
  • Materials
  • Why Set Up Your Own Palette?
  • Choosing Colors: Transparency, Opacity, Lightfastness
  • Choosing Colors: Granulation, Pigment Names
  • Mixing And Primary Colors
  • Color Temperature
  • Choosing A Palette
  • Tubes Or Pans
  • Basic Palette Layouts
  • Filling Your Custom Palette
  • Class Project: Mixing Experiments
  • Final Thoughts
  • Bonus lesson: Q&A
  • Bonus: My Field Palette Setup
  • Bonus: My Studio Palette Setup

Taught by

Julia Bausenhardt

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