somnubis

Aaaaand done

28😎

This is what I'm talking about! Yay!!!

Extremely useful shit.

I'm still not finished, though... There are more 12 of them to make.

This is what I'm doing instead of drawing tonight😁😁😁😁

My standard swatching system wasted a lot of paper and was too complicated. I used to make it like an addition chart (each paint pair gives a mix) + swatches for some gradients.

It became a big problem, since I switched to a new main palette of 8 paints instead of 5-6 (with possible extension in the future!). I don't want to buy another paper block just to understand which paints I'm going to use and how they blend together. Or reswatch everything in order to keep it organised. So I decided: fuck that table and fuck those long gradients. Truth is: I don't really need gradients, they only distract. Key values are easier to understand and keep. And I came up with a new flexible approach, which wastes less paper.

I'm going to cut this page into tiles like this:

Where X,Y are every possible pair of the main palette. And also my own simple codes for them, written along the right edge.

That allows me to make absolutely unbelievable things with palettes!!! I can sort them differently, I can pick any of them, look at them separately, connect them... Omg.... so much to try! Now it is possible to apply different color grading and even develop new by playing with them like lego. And I can also check e v e r y t h i n g that I could with the previous system. Absolutely the same info, except this one is more accessible and fun to interact with. And you know what else?

I can keep the information about the palette of every painting as codes on the other side of a paper to have a quick access to their real swatches without wasting paint!

...

I'm sure I'm not the first to come up with this, but maybe it still could be useful for someone who hasn't heard about it and I'm just so excited to share to be honest!!!!

P.S. I didn't check here how they flow and bloom, it needs to be tested of course, but I used cheaper paper for that, since it's slightly less important for me personally. The main focus here is on the color itself rather than on the paint's properties.

Uh, another scam... be careful, guys. The more people report accounts like this, the better

Btw dm is open, you can message if you have a clear purpose

Testing new palette

Happy birthday, Katharina, my furious and brave daughter!

Can't believe I came up with her just a bit more than one year ago, on the 24th of June 2025.

This comment is about the painting I finished the other day.

@cacophonyofcrows thank you again for asking! I'm glad to share and happy if this information could be useful.

How I painted that sword

My goal was to understand how to render metal with watercolor. So it's a study.

1️⃣ First thing I do is find a good reference.

I use this one, which is a photo of a real sword you can buy here. And the photo is also from there.

It suits me, because the subject of a study is big enough and simple. Environmet is also good. It doesn't distract, and made the sword clearly seen, because there's deep shade behind it and the colors around are limited: I see only green and brownish orange. The composition is simple and could be simplified even more to help me stay focused on steel.

2️⃣ I make a sketch.

Just to fix where and what will be placed.

3️⃣ I look at the reference and split it on different metal parts.

I will show you all conclusions about the reference on the finished painting, as long as I'm not sure if I'm allowed to upload that photo here.

Start painting with the blade (1) suits me better.

The first reason is: it has gradients and color transitions. The more blicky metall parts of the sword (2) (pommel + guard) are less complicated and absolutely similar to render. The second reason: the blade looks paler than the environment. I want to catch that difference in order to create realistic metal. It feels easier to balance contrast if I start with the palest part.

4️⃣ So, the blade! I look at the reference again, notice the colors and rate them from brighter to darker.

This is a crucial step. Every next action is made according to it, since the paper creates all the white in my watercolor paintings. If I cover up the necessary white, very likely the paper won't let me lift all the pigment up to completely undo that. In that case I lose the contrast and the whole image becomes flat. I don't want that. So I keep the information about white and semi-white spots in mind.

These are they, the most bright colors. White and everything close to it:

Then yellows and oranges, which are a bit less bright:

And then greys, they are the most dark colors on this blade. I notice them absolutely likewise and also keep them in mind.

5️⃣ Now I know what colors I should mix and how bright they are. So I try to mix and swatch them on a piece of paper, starting with the paler one. It's orange (since white is already on the painting!).

To match the reference, I compare every new try on my swatch with the photo, until it fits. Also, I memorise what paints it is mixed from to include the same paints in further color mixes.

6️⃣ Time to actually paint it!

I see two types of textures on this blade. Gradients and straight lined textures.

For gradients I go wet-on-dry and use paper towel on the edges of color blobs. Otherwise stains apear ones it's dry. I press the towel harder on the edge and go more and more gently to the center. So the gradient came up as a smooth color transition from white to orange.

Here I also put the same colors (yellowish orange and orange) on the guard and on the pommel as well because I already see they're basically the same:

7️⃣ I go almost dry-on-dry with a brush flattened between my fingers in order to reach those straight stokes of grey. Water is needed only to allow me pick up the pigment and to control how much I have it on my brush. If I pick up too much water, those straight tiny lines become blurry blobs.

8️⃣ Sometimes it needs to make something in between gradient and lined texture. Then I do gradient first, wait until it's dry, and go with the texture. Otherwise the texture may corrupt with the water.

That's how I go further:

mixing colors according to the reference,

using the same paints that I already used as much as it's possible,

remembering to not touch white spots,

layering colors from brighter to darker,

making gradients first.

9️⃣ The blade is finished now!

And Tumblr says that I can't attach more than 10 images. It's not a problem, though. The pommel and the guard I render in the same way. The main difference is: they're more shiny. The edges between bright and dark colors are better seen, which means there's almost no need for the towel. Also I mix darker colors to catch that contrast (more pigment, less water).

🔟 I pay less attention on the environment and paint it pretty chaotic, since it matters only to make an accent on the pale colors of the blade. So I just make the environment darker and more intence colored, using the same deep shady colors like on the pommel and on the guard.

Think of steel as a blurry pale mirror with gray filter really helped me by the way.

Well, that's it!

I made something strange...

The sky is watercolor on paper

The earth is basically fingerpainted on my phone after I took a photo

And then random adjustment play happened on top of that...