Swatching for Spring

Spring is a perfect time to sort out and organise art supplies. The brighter days and spring flowers create colour that inspires creativity and makes me want to reacquaint myself with some of the art supplies that I've left languishing in palettes over the winter. I found the perfect swatch holders recently and so embarked on swatching all of the watercolour paints I own. It turns out that I have way more watercolors than I thought!

I'd been meaning to sort out my watercolour paints for ages but wasn't sure how to organise them. I wanted to swatch them in a way I could move the swatches around once I was done. I'd seen Helen Cryer create a swatchbook using a sports card organising system and thought I'd do something similar. Helen's video can be found here if you're interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EoS57UnI7k&list=PLrRr-VPYuqzeQcRZOruZ9zVWxMGst_U1K&index=5

I went into WHSmith with the intention of buying some trading card refill sheets but when I saw them I realised I didn't need such large swatches. These cigarette card refills were nearby and they hold just the right sized cards for my purpose. I could also fit more swatches on each sheet so these are the ones I ended up with.

The clear sleeves that I choose to hold my swatches.

The back of the packaging showing other options for clear storage sleeves.

As I often use Bockingford paper for my watercolour sketches, I chose this for my swatches. I went for the cold-pressed option so I could see how the paints granulate. Watercolours generally look more vibrant on 100% cotton paper but it's expensive and I only rarely use it so it wasn't worth using this for my swatches.

I drew rectangles of 4.2 cm x 7 cm on the paper and wrote the names, brand and pigment number of each paint into the boxes. This was more difficult than expected as I didn't have each half pan of paint labelled and had swapped the pans about so many times I wasn't sure what some of them were. I managed to work it out through testing out the colour, comparing with tube paints and going through my old photos of the paints I'd bought (one of the perks of writing an art blog is that you tend to take photos of everything). I definitely need to be more organised in future and make sure I label everything as I buy it or fill a half pan from a tube.

I also thought to add a line to the corner of each swatching area so I could paint over it to indicate the opacity of the paint. I used a water resistant fine liner so the ink wouldn't run when I painted over it.

Then the real enjoyment began as I swatched each paint. It was so much fun to see each colour and realise what a good collection of paints I now own. Some of the colours were so joyful I can't wait to use them in my next paintings!

When each sheet of swatches was dry, I used my Fiskars paper cutter to cut each rectangle so it would fit in the refill sheet. The resulting swatches are just the right size for my needs and look great when organised into their colour families. Here are the finished swatches:

The red, orange and yellow swatches.

The pink, purple and blue swatches.

The turquoise and green swatches.

The earth colour swatches.

The white, grey and black swatches.

This process has been so useful! Not only do I now have a collection of swatches that shows all my colours together, but I can move them around as I add new paints to my collection or to compare colours as I chose the right combinations for a project. I've also sorted out my very disorganised palettes and labelled any anonymous half pans. Additionally, I can see where I have gaps in my collection and where I really don't need to buy any more paints (the mid purples for example).

I was really surprised to be so drawn to my earth colours and had forgotten how beautiful the soft Lalvarit Violet in the Horadam Naturals range is. I've been avoiding using the Iron Chrome (Roman Szmal) and Ostwald Grey (Winsor and Newton) due to the very dense, heavy pigments as I find them difficult to use, however seeing the dried swatches I love the range of tones that can be achieved with these paints and will keep using them to see if I can get used to how they lay down.

I can highly recommend using collectors sheets as a way to organise swatches and thoroughly enjoyed the process. It was actually a quicker process than I thought it would be and I had the whole lot done in two evenings. It'll save me loads of time in future as I can quickly compare colours and refer to which pigments I already own. It's also likely to save me money as I now appreciate I have a great range of colours and don't have a need for any more. The odd convenience mix or granulating watercolour may well catch my eye and cause me to part with my cash though!

Emma