Cotman Watercolor Reload

So I spent the summer doing watercolors but I needed a quick and easy way to do it.

love my Cotman watercolor travel set, I bought it while studying in Florence, Italy back in the summer of 2000 but as I matured as an artist, not all of the colors in the pallet worked for me anymore. I wanted to use a limited pallet that was more versatile. After much internet research I found a few articles on how to make my own watercolor set out of Altoid containers and pill boxes, but at the end of the day I just could not get rid of my $12 Cotman watercolor set so I decided to reload it.

I removed all of the half pans from the box and ordered empty half pans on-line. I also ordered 8ml tubes of Winsor & Newton watercolor paint. I wrote the name of the color on the side of the half pan for organizational purposes and for easy reloading of the colors.  

 I filled each empty half pan with one-third of a tube using a slightly altered limited but extremely versatile pallet that was introduced to me in graduate school by my professor and great illustrator William Low.

Warm primary’s: Cadmium Red Light, Cobalt Blue, Cadmium Yellow

Cool primary’s: Quinacridone Red, Phthalo Blue, Cadmium Lemon        

Additional paint: Cobalt Violet, Viridian, Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre, Payne's Gray and White Gouache. As you can see I simply kept the Burnt Sienna and Yellow Ochre from the original set

I let the paint sit in the half-pans for 48 hours until dry and then placed them into the travel set.

Now using a basic binder clip I can attach the travel set to my Moleskin watercolor sketchbook and with a water brush (synthetic brush with water in the handle) I can now do Plain Air watercolor studies as easily as sketching with a pencil. 

I will post some of my water color studies in the next few weeks.