Building My Travel Palette
We headed to Arches National Park yesterday with our photographer buddy in the back seat ready to get his 1k+ pics, while I soaked up the inspiration for my own creativity!
Today we are doing 2 trails that one of our friends Aunt, Uncle and pup are joining the caravan with their jeep and 20+ years experience on the trail!
In my note to you on Monday, I mentioned I’d share more about the paints I chose to build my palette for the trip with! Recording the moments that my mind took snapshots of, in watercolor notebook form, just creates a much more immersive experience. I toss my “perfectionist mindset” aside as much as possible. Liberating.
The Palette
And if your considering implementing a little watercolor notebook in a trip or your everyday, having access to your fav. collection of colors, in a super compact way, is going to make or break your desire to break’m out! That’s why I love my mini to-go palette I’ve mentioned 1,809,768,452.5 times. It’s wee-sized and each little pan is removable (thanks to magnets) to customize as you wish! It’s by ArtToolkit, of which I adore and have no sponsor relationship with…just a total fan!
For mine, I purchased as an empty palette that came with 12 pans + add’l pans to swap out as I wish. That way I can have a pan for each of my colors and swap out as I wish! Oh and the inside lid is where I mix or dilute colors, it’s a white vinyl decal that allows for endless mixing and wiping off.
THE PAINTS
About 2 years ago I got the bug to dive into nature journaling and using watercolor as my method. I wanted to minimize my ability to find excuses not to make entries and knowing the value of good quality watercolor paint, I chose to invest in a few tubes of Daniel Smith colors that would be staples/used for mixing and create endless shades. I also adore the craft of making paints by hand. I hunted around and found two artisans. One, an indigenous woman based in Canada with a long family history of making nature based paints. Her company is Beam Paints. The second is a chick I found on Etsy, @Kourtneypaints.
Before purchasing full-size from them, I ordered what are called “dot cards” (a thick paper, typically, with small dots of dried paint) as a fun way to try their “recipes”! To get from dot card to a palette pan, I broke up/crushed the little dots and messily pushed the crumbs of paint into the pan, added a couple drips of water and let air dry overnight, re-blending back together as a solid until I take wet brush to it.
Originally shared via e-mail 10/2022