In today’s video, I revisited a very sentimental art supply: my first ever watercolor palette. It’s a Royal Langnickel Essentials 24 color palette that I filled myself with tubes of paint back in early 2018. I haven’t used it in several years because I’ve been buying and enjoying other watercolors, but I was curious to see if these old paints would still work.
I decided to do a little experiment and see if I could re-wet these dried out paints. First, I moistened my watercolor paper because these paints would definitely need all the moisture they could get. I like to wet both sides of the paper to prevent buckling while I paint.
Then, I grabbed a round brush and blotted it on a paper towel to remove excess water. Picking a deep green that was a favorite color in this palette, I dipped my brush in and was surprised to see the paint still wetted nicely.
As I went through the other colors, I was really impressed with how well they blended considering this was a budget brand. It was fun to reminisce about how I used to use these paints to create little galaxy paintings to practice blending.
Another thing I love about watercolors is the element of surprise you get – you don’t always have complete control, but that’s part of the fun! Overall, I was really happy with how these inexpensive paints re-wetted and performed.
Next, I played around with some purples and yellows, adding them to the page. It was amazing to see that even though this paint is five years old, it re-wet just fine. Who knows, maybe watercolors could last forever!
As my paper started to dry a little, I noticed a bit of a glazing effect instead of blending because some of the paint had dried before I went over it again. There wasn’t too much of a chalky film to them, which you might expect with cheap paint.
I decided to stop here and let the paint dry completely before adding some doodles on top.
Once the paint was dry, the colors remained bright, and the blending looked nice. I then grabbed a Uniball pen and started doodling intuitively, letting the marks take me wherever they wanted to go.
Doodling on watercolor is relaxing because watercolor takes away a lot of control. It’s surprising how much you might like something you had no idea about, and it’s interesting to see what other people enjoy as well.
I decided to trace some of the purple veins I had painted earlier to tie everything together. I love using circles and dots in my doodles because you can vary the size and they work well in most compositions.
I also added some squares and shapes to the green area, just to break things up a bit with some hard edges.
This whole process was a good way to practice mindfulness, as I had to be careful not to put my hand over anything wet. I really liked how the black pen added some definition and contrast to the piece.
Overall, I wasn’t sure if this piece needed much more, so I decided to call it good at this point. The final product is a fun and colorful combination of watercolors and doodles.
I hope you enjoyed this little walk down memory lane with me and seeing how some old art supplies can be revived!