- Katie Smith
How to Swatch your Watercolor Pan Set
Hey everyone, I recently made a swatch of some of my watercolors and wanted to show you the process, in case you’re curious about doing it for your own pan sets.
Today’s post is also a bit of a product review, because I just bought this watercolor tin palette, and since I’ve gotten some questions about it on instagram, I’m doing a review!
Let’s start with the swatching:
Step 1: Start by cutting down a piece of watercolor paper to fit into the lid of your palette.
Step 2: use a ruler to sketch a grid out onto the paper that matches the paints inside your palette. This tin holds 40 half pans, so that’s the grid I made.
Step 3. Fill up your pans. Obviously you’d skip this set if your palette is already filled. I, however, am using this tin to hold all of the tube watercolors I own. I actually left a few empty in case I bought new colors.
Step 4. As you fill up the half pans, write out the name of each color into the spaces on your swatch paper.
Step 5: Use a clean paintbrush to swatch each color into the matching spaces on the paper. It’s helpful to have a couple of jars of water nearby, so that you can continuously clean your paintbrush so that the swatches are true to color, and not contaminated with the previous color.
Now you can keep this inside your palette, and refer back to it when you’re painting so that you know exactly what each color will look like on paper.
Okay, let’s review this palette:
What is it?
Fclub Watercolor Tins Palette Paint Case with 40Pcs Half Pans Carrying Magnetic Stripe on The Bottom
Why I bought it: I wanted some empty paint pans so that I could squeeze my tube watercolors into a palette.
I was just going to buy some empty half pans on amazon, but when I saw this tin had Van Gogh’s Starry Night printed on it, AND it was only a couple of dollars more than just empty pans by themselves, I wanted to try this.
What’s cool about it: Well, besides the Starry Night (Nan Gogh fangirl here)? Each half pan has a magnet on the bottom, so that they stick to the tin and don’t fall out.
Any cons? well, when I first opened it, half of the pans had come away from the magnets. The magnets turned out to be some cheap self adhesive magnetic strips on the bottom of each one, that aren’t actually that “sticky” so the adhesive didn’t hold to the half pans. Easily fixed by me reglueing them to the pans with a stronger glue, but I was bummed that I had to do that at all.
I did actually remove a few of the half pans on the bottom row, simply because I had some extra full pans with watercolors that a friend gave me and I wanted to include in the tin as well.
Overall, I’d totally recommend it, if you want a new palette tin, and if don’t mind possibly repairing the magnets, and you love Van Gogh. Although it is available in different patterns on the outside as well.
You can grab one on amazon here. Note that this isn’t a paid post, and not an affiliate link. I just really like this new palette and wanted to let you guys know about it! 😉
What other art product reviews would you like to see here?