Those watercolor questions.....

Many folks have asked about watercolors and my use of them. I have two preferred methods for watercolor, one is the watercolor pencil and the other is squeezing my tubes into a travel palette, that gets stuffed into my sketch bag.

I have a box that I carry pencils, pens, kneaded eraser, glue stick (you never know when you wanna glue something in your sketchbook, like the fortune from a fortune cookie), pencil sharpener, a small ruler (artists can't draw a straight line either, though we get closer than some.) and a full range of watercolor pencils. I can be a color junkie when I shop for supplies. I have the basics of what you need for a palette, but sometimes that bright purple, or amazing blue, or hot pink just screams to be added to my box.

If you want to buy the watercolor pencils loose, or create your own watercolor travel palette and you aren't sure what to buy, these basic colors will get you going:

Lemon Yellow

Cadmium Yellow (or a safer version)

Cadmium Orange (or a safer version)

Cadmium Red (OK, ditto the above two)

Alizarin Crimson (this color is fugitive so you might want to get the more permanent version)

Sap Green Or Hooker's Green Light (I like Daniel Smith's Sap Green)

Viridian

Ultramarine Blue

Cobalt Blue

Cerulean Blue

Yellow Ochre

Burnt Sienna

Burnt Umber

These pretty much can make anything work. Brands are a matter of preference. I like Derwent and Cretacolor AquaMonolith watercolor pencils. The Cretacolor AquaMonoliths are awesome, the whole pencil is pigment and it's wrapped, where the others are like a traditional pencil.

Watercolors, I prefer Daniel Smith but there are a lot of brands out there, just make sure that what you pick isn't student grade color because the student grade colors are not made with the rich pigments that the artist grades colors are and they are not as lightfast as the artist grade colors and can fade over time.