#pre work

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Monday- info. Watercolor set-up. 

Hey, team. 

So tonight I wanted to share with you a little bit about my set up, and a couple crucial steps in the beginning that help hugely when I start on colors for a new project. 

The top picture is a little doodle I did of the specific color palette I am using for the book I am working on right now, called HERE//after. One of the things that have helped me greatly in making good work is limiting my palette. Generally, for any one project, I try to limit my colors down to anywhere from 3-7 (this palette has 8, but I ended up nixing #2, the cobalt blue). This way I do not get too overwhelmed by my options, and all the pages have a nice, homogenized feel to them that helps make the book look uniform. 

After I have picked my colors for my palette, I set up a color sheet, like the one you see above. Using squares ranging from lighter to darker/ more saturated I map out the colors I am using, and then, as you can see in the bottom half of the color sheet, I mix each color with the other until I have all the color combinations any two colors in my palette can make. 

This step is a bit tedious, and more time consuming than I would like, but I would HIGHLY recommend it. It is so helpful when I move forward to know which colors make what and what I need to mix in order to pursue what I am envisioning. 

Generally, your work is going to look better if you have a palette, and you mix the colors you may need from colors within that palette. You can definitely buy every paint under the sun and just use the straight tube color, but that is a) very expensive, and b) will often make your painting look all over the place, and not as unified and whole as if you has mixed the colors yourself. I have seen a lot of new or first-time painters come into an art supply store and try to pick the exact true tube colors they need to make a piece, instead of setting up a trusted palette and mixing their own paints. I guaranty you can grow more as a painter with the later. 

Now, there is no real right or wrong way to make art, and I am sure there are some awesome painters who only use straight unmixed paints, but I have found on a whole that that is the harder way. 

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