Empty watercolour palettes

I hate shopping for clothes. I am just not that interested. But paints and art supplies is a different matter altogether! I have to stop myself from buying them - I just don't allow myself into art shops, and I avoid the online art stores as much as I can, but once I start, it's hard to stop. I recently had such a binge - I bought new brushes, new watercolour paper, new pens, and also two new empty watercolour palettes. (I now have told myself that I am not buying anything until at least Christmas - the truth is that I probably have enough art supplies to last me until the day I die of very old age)

I have chosen one medium-sized palette for studio work and one small-sized one for urban and travel sketching. I already have several ready-filled palettes of course. But I really wanted these ones because I can fill them with my favourite colours! Plus they were not expensive.

So I really enjoyed picking my favourite colours from my watercolour tubes and organising them.

• I love Vanadium Yellow, because it mixes beautifully with Ultramarine. And it's so bright!
• But I also love Aureolin Yellow because of the vibrant greens it produces with Cobalt Blue. 
• And Quinacridone Gold creates more muted colours. 
• And I love PV19 (Ruby Red in the Schmincke range, but it's called many other names in different brands) because it's the perfect pinky red for roses. 
• And then there is Pyrrol Red, which is really fire-engine red, but transparent at the same time. 
• And Phthalo blue - so dark and transparent too. 
• And Phthalo Turquoise and Cobalt PG50 for the sea. 
• And crazy Phthalo Green, which becomes a subtle water hue when mixed with ultramarine. And produces rich dark greens when mixed with a touch of Pyrrol Red.
• And then the earth colours: Raw Sienna as a pale wash for a sky, Burnt Sienna to bring down the harshness of some green mixes. 
• And Paynes Gray and Burnt Umber, both dull on their own, but useful for dark mixes, and they look surprisingly good together. 
• And Green Apatite Genuine too, a dark ugly green, but it comes to life when you add a dash of yellow and I love to see how it mixes with Phthalo Blue, and how it granulates with Ultramarine!

In other words, I love colours! One of my favourite books is "Blue and Yellow don't Make Green", a whole book on colour theory. I can spend hours painting colour swatches!

So, Da-Da, here are my new palettes - The big one was easy - there was room for all my favourites. The small one a bit harder, as difficult choices had to be made!

The cobalt blue in the little palette is different from the big one - it's actual cobalt blue (PB28) rather that a mix of ultramarine and white, which is what I had until now. So I'm looking forward to seeing how it behaves in mixes!