Supplies and Materials

Articles and videos on supplies and materials (mostly watercolor, but some other supply info as well).

Second Sunday Live Demos | Supplies and Materials

Live Demo 9 Aug 2020—What’s on Your Palette?

A lot of people have asked me to talk about what brands of paint I use (most of them!) and what colors I have on my palette (way too many!). I’m always at a loss, because I am constantly playing around with the colors on my palette. I’m just as much of a sucker for a cool new color as the next person. Isn’t that just part of the fun of watercolor? 😉 But it’s time to take a stab at answering the REAL question, How can you decide which colors to have on your palette?”

Mar 2019: Get Ready for Spring Plein Air Painting

Several different options for light, packable watercolor sketching kits, and a few tips for selecting a manageable subject from the sometimes overwhelming wealth of options when working on location.

Supplies and Materials | Technical How-to

12 Tips for Happy Brushes—How to Care for Your Watercolor Brushes

I’m welcoming some new watercolor painters to the medium, so there have been some requests for information about caring for watercolor brushes. (Even if you know all this, you might want to skip down to item 9. In the third paragraph, there are two links to videos about how brushes are made. The first is…

Color and Color Mixing | Supplies and Materials | Technical How-to

Explore Your Pigments with a Color Wheel—Primaries, Secondaries, Tertiaries

When I’m laying a wash, I want to focus my attention on creating color mingles, wet-in-wet effects and edges that are just the right degree of softness. So many things that will only happen if the timing is just right! I want design and drawing and color all worked out ahead of time, so I don’t…

Supplies and Materials | Technical How-to

What’s a Cradled Board?

This must be one of the questions I get asked the most often! I used to mat and frame my watercolors. From time to time someone would ask if I could frame them without glass. I knew of some watercolorists who were painting on canvas or boards that were specially prepared to be absorbent enough…

Supplies and Materials | Tips & Hacks

Painting Tips—Easy Acrylic Clean-up (plus some tips for watercolorists, too!)

One of the joys of watercolor is the ease of cleanup. In fact, you don’t really have to clean up at all, if you don’t feel like it. Nothing terrible happens if you just wipe off your brush, put it down and walk away. Well, mostly—do you know the right way to put down a watercolor…

Creative Energy Journaling | Finding Your Style | Sketching | Supplies and Materials

The Mighty Tiny Matchbook Journal (and Other Ways to Avoid the Mistakes that Keep You from Journaling!)

I’ve heard the lament from quite a number of you: you bought a lovely journal, and you think the activities I’ve been posting look really fun and interesting, but you are too busy to journal right now. Maybe later, when life calms down a bit . . . I feel your pain! I don’t know about…

Review Cart