Professional Grade

It's a large investment.

I just spent $80 on 9 tubes of watercolor paint. Nine. Seems like a small number for that price, but I believe it's worth the investment.

I have been using student grade Winsor & Newton watercolors for years, and have a few professional/artist grade tubes. The idea of spending $10 on one 5ml tube of paint just didn't compute. Until I got the Daniel Smith Try It Dot pages. These are AWESOME!

Over 200 colors, all there to try out and use. The real deal in trial size. Genius. It is because of these sheets did I finally come to realize, as a professional, how much I needed professional grade watercolors.

They're smooth like silk, mix without a hitch, and the colors are so gorgeous! I then decided to purchase. But the price tag was still making my stomach turn. So expensive!

This led me to an entire week of studying and figuring out which colors to purchase. The DS dot sheets were key to this. They're the only professional grade paints I have right now. To help I found a great website that makes watercolor paints into science called HandPrint.

I don't understand much in science, but he had a large section on palette color choices. All of the research was done for me, and they listed which colors were the best to have in every palette....colors that make all of the "convenience" colors (sap green, turquoise, violets, etc.).

That's what I needed, the foundation colors. From there I could at least start, then purchase as needed the extra colors.

I also came upon an exercise to help decide which colors to have in your palette. A color chart. As one of my students yesterday best said "A multiplication chart but with color." Exactly!

Here's the blog link: Ask Susie - http://ask-susie.blogspot.com/2009/01/make-your-own-color-chart-for.html

Tho the woman who suggested the chart used only 7 colors, I ended up having 13. I wanted to see and be exactly sure what I was going to spend my money on.

This was grueling but totally surprising and fun seeing what two colors made what. I was pretty amazed at the little knowledge I had about color mixing.

Here are the colors I ended up purchasing:

Phthalo Blue GS - DS
Phthalo Green BS - WN
Cobalt Blue - WN
Quinacridone Rose - DS
Perylene Maroon - DS
Burnt Sienna - WN
Cadmium Scarlet - WN
Yellow Ochre - WN
Benzimida Yellow (Winsor Yellow) - WN

* DS = Daniel Smith; WN = Winsor & Newton