30 Days of Watercolor, Review

Here’s the review of my 30 Days of Watercolor series.

Supplies I used:

• Strathmore 400 series watercolor paper, 9×12″
• Princeton Elite #12 round brush
• Winsor & Newton Cotman pocket sketch set
• 2 16 oz mason jars for water
• Paper towels for the water control cloth
• Duck brand general masking tape
• A small space heater which I used like a blow dryer

Scanning process

My scanner is just a little too small to scan a 9×12″ page, so I had to scan each corner of the painting and combine the scans. Then I cropped and color corrected the scan with Lightroom, resized to 2000px on the smaller dimension for the full image and 512px for the thumbnail. WordPress has settings for generating thumbnails, but it was easier to export a thumbnail size image than to figure out how to do what I wanted with the WordPress settings.

Paint

Would I recommend the Winsor & Newton pocket sketch set?
For less than $20, yes. The colors are okay, the mixing area is usable, and it’s very compact. My main complaint is that the mixing area is difficult to clean. It’s really hard to get all the paint out from the inside corners. To give you a baseline of how long the set lasts, I started the 30 days with at least 80% of each color except Permanent Red and Phthalo Blue, which were both at about 70%. By the end, I had run out of Permanent Red, both yellows, Sap Green, and almost entirely out of Phthalo Blue and Viridian Hue. I need to get more paint to really continue painting, because I’m out of the primary colors.

Paper

I used Strathmore 400 series watercolor paper, 9×12″, 12 sheets spiral bound. It was on sale at Hobby Lobby for $2.99, so I bought a bunch of them. This paper is just okay. I haven’t used more expensive watercolor paper, but it handles the water much better than my mixed media sketchbook. I like that it’s spiral bound; it makes scanning easy. All my paintings warped to some degree, although the later ones warped much less, probably because I got better at controlling the water. Also, some sheets have hydrophobic spots where the water doesn’t stick and I found myself having to go over those areas with the brush several times before the paper would cooperate.

Brush

The brush I used is a Princeton Elite #12 synthetic long round brush. It cost about $18 at Hobby Lobby. At the start, it was in very good to like new condition. By the end, the fibers were frayed and it didn’t form a point because the tip was curling.

Overall, I used student grade/cheap supplies. However, a side of cheap supplies which I don’t see a lot of people talking about is the lower pressure to perform. Because each sheet of paper cost about $0.25, I didn’t feel like every painting had to be a masterpiece. So, if you can only spend more on one thing, I’d recommend getting a better brush because it’s the least consumable item.

Favorites from this series

My favorite part of this 30 days has been Mr. Shibasaki’s videos. I enjoyed watching every one of them and I highly recommend them, even if you aren’t interested in painting or watercolor. I feel like I’ve learned not just the techniques, but a mindset for painting which I haven’t found anywhere else.

My favorite day was definitely #19, when I painted 15 trees. It was late in the evening when I had the thought I could paint 15 trees and I just started before I could talk myself out of it. I ended up painting more boldly and quickly because the goal was to paint 15 trees, not one good tree.

Conclusions

This series was so much fun! I’m definitely going to continue painting. Telling people you’re going to paint for a month and posting everyday is a great way to actually do it.