It’s my own fault. For Christmas, I asked for a modestly-priced set of 60 watercolors I’d seen online. And I got it, hurray! I was in awe of the staggeringly large array of colors in the set, compared to the 12-color set I’d been using.

I know that real artists often prefer to blend their colors, and often limit themselves to a small palette of colors when painting. And I’ve done that. But I’ve found that, when going back to work on a painting, trying to remember how I blended to achieve a certain color is sometimes impossible.

After I got over the thrill of my new paints, I faced the realization that I needed to get them out of the tubes and into trays or pans. The idea is that watercolor paints are allowed to dry out, and that you then wet (reactivate) them with water when you’re ready to paint.

So I went online and bought a set of empty watercolor mini pans. When I got them, I realized that I’d have to figure a way to label them, seeing how similar some of the colors are. I didn’t want to refill a partially empty pan with the wrong color. I hunted up our fine-tipped Sharpie and wrote (in teensy print) each color’s name and number on the 60 tiny pans.

Next, I took each tube and squeezed paint into the four corners of each pan and then filled the center, and ended with firmly tapping the pan on the table to remove any air pockets. I’d had a set of inexpensive tube watercolors in the past which I’d squeezed onto a watercolor tray, and they shriveled, cracked, and crumbled as they dried, which caused a couple of the colors completely fall out. I was going to try to avoid that this time.

However, when I went to check the mini pans the next day, guess what? The paints were shriveled and cracked. So, I topped each pan off with a little more paint, tapping again to fill in the cracks. And when I checked today? More cracks–the refilling done yesterday made no visible difference. I Googled about cracked watercolor paints and saw that this can be a problem, especially with the less expensive ones. I saw that some artists add glycerin or gum Arabic to watercolors to prevent cracking—too late here! I’ll just have to figure out how to store and transport them in a way that doesn’t allow the paint bits to fall out.

The final thing that I’ve seen recommended is to create a set of color swatches—you paint samples on a piece of paper, to see what the paints look like on paper (which can be very different from how they look in the pans).

So this morning I took out a sheet of watercolor paper, created a grid for 60 colors and their names, and painted 60 little squares of paint colors. It was interesting, seeing how some of them looked so different from their appearance in the pans.

So, after all of this, I’m finally, FINALLY at the point that I can use my new watercolors. Too bad all this prep work has taken away any desire to–for today anyway. Maybe tomorrow. 😊