I recently wrote about my acquisition of the entire range of Faber Castell Albrecht Durer watercolour pencils. My goal was to explore my new colours, test them all and create a colour chart. As yet, I have not done this in a coordinated way.
However today I have tested the range of blues and browns as these are two colours that I have never been completely happy with in my sketchkit.
Blue
I have never been happy with Sky Blue for Melbourne Sky. It is ok until you add the waterbrush to the page and then it turns grey. Melbourne does have its share of grey days, but sometimes I want to capture the blue of the sky on the page. My current choice of Ultramarine is just not quite right either.
I am now going to use either Light Ultramarine and/or Light Phthalo Blue
Browns
I currently have Burnt Sienna, Raw Umber, Burnt Umber, Walnut Brown, and Dark Sepia in my sketchkit. I am definitely replacing Raw Umber as it far to yellow for any of the objects I sketch. I think Bistre might replace it. I rarely use Burnt Sienna, so it may go. Dark Sepia is a relatively recent discovery and I use it for many nature sketches.
There are a few things to note.
- knowing the colours that you own enables you to be aware of the large range of colour choice that you potentially have.
- a colour can often change quite dramatically on the page when water is added.
- there is a huge range of colours available and many of them are very close
- you don’t have to use all the colours!
Practice , practice, practice. Have fun. explore.
What are the favourites in your sketchkit?
Thanks for your post Alissa. I just tried ultramarine together with helioblue-reddish and after wetting ended up with a good match with the colour of the sky in a recent photo I took.
Oh, I love seeing your colors and hearing about how you think about your color choices. I use mostly Caran d’Ache watercolor pencils (Museum Aquarelle and Supracolor), so the palette is slightly different. My favorite for Seattle sky (when it isn’t gray 😉 ) is Middle Cobalt Blue, which is similar to your Cobalt Blue. It always seems like it should be too dark for sky, but once water is washed through it, it’s just right. I hope you will do a post on your greens sometime. I have so many greens that come in sets that are very unnatural, and I get frustrated by how few greens I can use for trees and other plants I actually see in my environment. I know you have a lot of different trees and plants than I do, but I’d be curious, anyway, about your choices. Thanks!