My Homemade Travel Paint Kit

So what do you think of my Travel Paint kit I made?  I took an online watercolor class last spring from Laure Ferlita. She showed how to make a travel watercolor pallet with watercolor pencils. I tried that but my pencils were not so good so I decided to use my watercolor paint. Click on the link to see how Laure made hers.
 Laure Ferlita's video
Here are a couple more photos of it.



 Here it is with a watercolor journal. I like this journal because it is made with watercolor paper that is heavy. I hate when paper buckles as you paint.



Here is my kit opened up.  You can see that I use Daniel Smith liquid watercolors. They come in a tube so I made a dot for each color.  I numbered each color and then listed the color names next to it's number. I also put the number of light fastness by it's name.
Also in my kit is several water brushes. These are good for travel.  You fill the barrel with water and they don't leak. Yeah!!  They will drip if you squeeze them as you paint.  But if you don't squeeze them they do let out a little water as you paint to move the paint around.
In my kit I added a pencil, and 2 waterproof ink pens, one black and one brown.
I also have a nice paper towel for wiping the brush.  If you are out hiking and in your jeans you can wipe your brushes on your jeans. Yep.

To see the photo larger you can click on the photo and enlarge it.


This is my first try at painting with my new kit.  I have never painted from dots with nowhere to mix my paints.  I was parked at the elementary school waiting for Peanut. I parked so that I had a view of the orange grove across the street of the school.  I took artistic liberty and added a lake and a couple pine trees.  Although there is the brown sandy area there.  It is a dry river.  If we have a lot of rain then there are massive flash floods there. I lost a friend there who got swept away by the water. So sad.


I took this with the painting in the sun.

After I got Peanut we went home and we painted in the new garage studio.  I need to think of a name for our art/craft/painting area (studio).  Any suggestions?



I tried to capture Peanut.  She only stayed in that position for a minute or two.  I couldn't get her hands since she is always in motion so I just blurred them. LOL
She was painting  also.  She loves to paint like me.



Here you can see the watercolor painting kit with my Peanut painting.

My verdict?  I love the Travel Kit.  It is easy to use. It isn't messy. It all fits into that little ziplock bag.  I could put it in my purse easily with my journal and go out walking or visiting a museum.  It is very versatile.
I love it.

Well go give it a try.  Happy Painting!!

Paintings from the Past-#1

I want to start showing some of my paintings that I did in the past. So now and then I will put up an old one and tell you something about it.

Here is a painting I did when I was taking painting in college.  

This is a cactus flower. I don't now what type it is. I was inspired by my grandfather. Grandpa chickens.  We called him that because he had chickens. He had a farm in the San Fernando Valley, Ca. back during the depression. It was there until the Northridge earthquake which was a huge story in the news. It took down freeways and the new Olive View hospital where my Grandma Jane worked.

So we would go visit my grandpa a lot. He always had us eat outside at the picnic table. There was a big umbrella tree. I don't know if that is a real name or just the name he gave it.  He also had a grove of olive trees.  I can remember that he was always raking up olives so that we would not step on them, then track them into the house.

Well next to the picnic table he had this big pot with a cactus. The branches were flat like a christmas cactus and the flowers were similar. But his flowers were about the size of a large rose. My grandpa was so proud of his cactus flowers.

So here is my painting. I was working on shadows. Also I was trying to make the color of the flower pop.  I did this by mixing the complementary color of the orange, which is blue into the background color. The background was started with blue then I added burnt umber and black till I achieved the color I wanted.

A blackish color is so much more interesting to look at if you make it with other colors. Also one doesn't really know why the flower sings unless they understand the concept of color placement.

I will write about color in another post. 

I worked on fading the green branch into the distance. 

The painting is 18" X 24"

The paint is gouache and watercolor. I used the gouache where I needed it to be opaque. I used the watercolor for the rest. 

So that is the painting from the past. Grandpa's cactus flower.