Adapting A Winsor & Newton Field Pocket Set Travel Watercolour Palette & Paint Selection

[@tdelphia1]

I think I would cut an old cotton sock to make a wristband in lieu of the sponge. The sock piece would fit over the outside of the closed palette and then you would have room for 3 more colors with the sponge gone. I bought that Koi palette too for repurposing 😊

[@berolinastrassmann]

The sock idea sounds fantastic! I like the idea of something to keep the box protected as well

[@helencryer]

That's a nice idea, thanks! The palette I showed isn't a Koi one. (I did have a Koi one in the past though), it was just a generic Amazon one. The paints in it weren't as good as the Kois.

[@isabellalucia7820]

And the sock/band would hold a couple of brushes…

[@PaulaScardamalia]

Always fun to play with new palette set ups, especially for travel. Fun to watch.

[@ContainedFire]

Ooh that Mijello Lemon Yellow is popping off the page! On the new all-white color of the field box, I can't decide which I prefer between that and the classic blue one.

[@helencryer]

It's an incredible yellow! I don't think I'd mind too much either way!

[@coloredcarol8074]

I got this box also, I quite liked the small brush to paint tiny details or on my mini sketchbooks

[@helencryer]

That's great you like it!

[@lightwavz]

That was a great mod! Now I have to go dig mine out and see what I can do too. Isn't it funny how personal and regional color choices are? I use tons of convenience greens and earth colors as I am a landlocked gardener. I tried the Daniel Smith 6 color mixing set and I didn't relish the mixing. Now I can mix acrylics and gouaches all day and all night, but I don't enjoy mixing watercolor at all, at least this year. 😂 I do love all the quinacridone colors. Thank you so much, Helen!

[@helencryer]

Thank you! Yes definitely! I remember taking a look at what several big KZbin artists used for their (at the time) limited palettes, and they varied enormously! It kind of made me feel happier about choosing exactly what I like!

[@awatercolourist]

I love your DIY spirit 😁.

[@helencryer]

Haha, thanks! You should see the whole downstairs floor I tiled of our house - it's my greatest masterpiece!

[@awatercolourist]

@@helencryer Yes, you mentioned that before. I must say, it looked professionally done 🙂.

[@berolinastrassmann]

Clever hack! I almost gasped when I saw you cut the middle part...but it is sensible if you want to use the magnetic sheet. I have two of these and love them. I keep switching the contents all the time. I ditched the sponge and added two extra colours, somi have 14 half pans in there now. I likeda viewer's suggestion to put a wrist band or sock around the box and use as a sponge...this will protect the box and solve the issue with the sponge. Good to see you playing! Off to paint now!

[@helencryer]

Yes, all of my half pans are too deep to fit under the bars properly, but I bought it knowing that was a possibility. Other viewers suggested pulling out the hinge pin to remove the centre section too, but that didn't even occur to me! Thanks!

[@tinakoyama8258]

How satisfying to see it all fit together nicely! Great hack!

[@helencryer]

I was happy it worked!

[@vickilee6335]

I also sometimes put random or unusual colors together just to see what I can do with them in a painting. I really enjoy experiments like that. Fun!

[@helencryer]

It's great isn't it! A fun way to keep learning!

[@goat8477]

You could push out the thin metal rod that holds the plastic parts in place. Take a paperclip and push the rod out. Remove the middle slider and thread the rod back in so it still holds the mixing plate. This way you could put the middle slider back in should you decide it's useful after all. p.s. oups.... too late . But also most of the metal palettes have these removable trays. Just in case you want to expand the modifications - which are half the fun!

[@helencryer]

That would have been far too sensible! 😂 So I just gave it a go now out of curiosity, and I didn't have anything long enough to push the pin right through, but it would work for people if you did.

[@goat8477]

@@helencryer Oh I know. Most of the time I don't have the nerve to fiddle around with sensible solutions - my favorite tool in my studio are pliers.. I call them my 'jaws of life'.... I started to write my suggestion in the first minute or so. As I finished writing you had found your own solution. I did not mean to be 'teacher'y' 🙂

[@helencryer]

Haha!!! Love it! You didn't come across as teachery at all! Just sensible!

[@snowpony001]

Good choices and a nice little travel setup!

[@helencryer]

Thanks!

[@zenlife1200]

Three and a half minutes in and I'm telling you to push out the metal pin that holds the mixing flap and that extra bit of plastic lol. My kids think I'm mad 😂 Pliers are a very handy art tool. When I was first setting up my large metal paint palette with all my paints, I took the pin out of the front facing mixing palette and removed it so I had some bench space to fill pans and make up my color chart. I put it back on after I was finished. It's now my studio set that I work from at home. I have an urge to buy Payne's grey right now. After doing some monochrome ink paintings with my calligraphy pen I want to do a few paintings using just Payne's grey watercolor. I can't decide whether to buy the regular one or the blue grey though so I'm going to look for a video comparing them

[@helencryer]

Honestly, it never even occurred to me, but then again I'm not always the sharpest tool in the toolkit!! 😂 Good luck on your hunt! I have a few compared in my big swatch folder, if that helps?

[@helencryer]

(They are 6:50 in this video:) kzbin.info/www/bejne/anbShGhtitN8bc0si=FteBzHjt32-7uy4B

[@zenlife1200]

@@helencryer I watched a few videos today, including yours, and decided I like the payne's grey over the blue grey because of the granulations. I also discovered I like Jane's grey which also granulates and is a more purple grey. There's a painter whose work I love called Avi Dey. I really like the purplish color he uses in his shadows so I had a go at mixing my own. I used french ultramarine, quin rose and quin gold and mixed enough to fill my own half pan. It'll probably shrink a lot when it dries though. I also had a go at mixing a dark blue turquoise using phthalo turquoise and prussian blue because I'd like a darker bluer turquoise and I haven't seen that color to buy. DIY mixes are fun to make. I might make up a travel palette with some DIY convenience mixes just to see how that would work.

[@helencryer]

That's a great idea to mix up an entire half pan of mixes you like! I like the sound of the Jane's Grey. I've been enjoying A. Gallo's Notturno for shadows (a deep granulating purple).

[@zenlife1200]

@@helencryer It looks good but I can't get A Gallo paints down here. The brands are expanding so maybe in the future

[@MrPaulOnion]

Just a thought for the future: if you end up with colors that you know you don't want but you still want to use the pan and you can't get them out easily, leave it in some warm water for a while. It should soften up and be easier to remove or you could try dissolving it completely.

[@helencryer]

Thanks ever so much for the suggestion, though I always have empty pans on hand (for when I buy tubes). I did this once and I can't describe just how messy the process was! Plus selling them means someone else can use them.

[@wooling81]

Fantastic video! I'm going to do this for my upcoming holiday! Thank you ❤

[@helencryer]

Thanks! Happy holidaying!

[@ChantelleArts]

This looks so fantastic ☺☺

[@donnad7373]

I was just looking at that field kit. I like the colors you picked. Plus, can switch them out depending on subject. Thanks for the magnet idea.

[@helencryer]

Yes, I love being able to switch them out easily with any of my paints! If you do go down the magnet route, I'll just warn you that the first time I tried it, I bought magnet that was too thin, and it didn't hold the pans very well. This is the stuff I bought: amzn.to/3UlIAAm

[@PatriciaVoinescuArt]

Thank you for the link for the magnetic sheets!

[@GreenSharpieScience]

If you love quin gold deep you should try aussie red gold if you haven’t. It may not quite get the pale yellow ocher tones but its really nice it’s become my favorite color its from daniel smith too

[@helencryer]

It has definitely caught my eye in the past, but I was a bit worried it would be too bright - can I ask how you use it?

[@GreenSharpieScience]

@@helencryer it’s fantastic for mountains like those in the western parts of the US. But also in greener mountains too. It makes some fabulous muddy greens and my absolute favorite combo with it is with winsor newtons cobalt turquoise (though daniel smith or rembrant work great too) I went to visit some glacial mountain this past summer and the blue water is incredible and really is the pure cobalt turquoise color but for the shadows adding in the aussie red gold is perfect and the combo creates a gorgeous granulation pattern that I just love it’s some how vibrant but muted. It also is great to mix with purples for some great deeper colors too. I know you mostly do coastal scenes so you may be right with how vibrant it is in comparison to other tones and the blue and grays of the sky and sea, but if you’re painting forest scenes with more greens and such it’s great. Or at least Ive been loving it for that kind of painting. 🙂

[@kookatsoonjan]

@@GreenSharpieScience Aussie Red Gold...is my only tube...I have almost finished...mind you I sold a half pan to someone...it sure DOES NOT like to be shoved into a pan...and will never dry nice and flat...always crevices and hard flicks...and it shrinks a lot...but...oh so worth it...the things you can do with Aussie Red Gold...yep a three pigment colour to boot as well...are amazing I think....Janis

[@nottaholiday]

Thanks Helen.. love that Verdaccio. Found myself craning my neck to see the mixes off screen lol

[@helencryer]

It's such a useful colour! Sorry about my bad filming!

[@nottaholiday]

@helencryer no don't be..I love your videos

[@helencryer]

😁 Thanks!!

[@FaithAnnNB]

Love this customization! I have never picked up this palette because the professional version seems too pricey (since I primarily want it for the palette). I might have to keep my eyes open for a sale on the Cotman version so I could use it with my own paints as you have done. I love travel palettes SO much 😊.

[@helencryer]

Travel palettes... a never ending source of happiness!!

[@wendycoyne2899]

The field pocket kit with artist quality paint is on sale at the SAA, less that £40 with 12 half pans,

[@helencryer]

Great, thanks!

[@ericakauffman5786]

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

[@lizhart81]

Not related to the cotman travel palette (nice hack, btw, magnetic sheeting is so handy!), but the first "mixing palette" you showed: those plastic inserts that the pans sit inside looked very familiar to me. I had a look in my palettes, and they look just like the unusual clip-in pan and holder arrangements in my derwent palettes. So if you ever wanted to, you could probably pop some individual derwent inktense/graphitint/pastel refill pans straight into that palette, without any cleaning out of rubbish paint required!

[@helencryer]

Well spotted! Yes, they are interchangeable - I recognised them too when I got the cheap set!

[@pantalonious3984]

just so you know Winosr and Newton use extruyded paint pellets in pans so they should just fall out no prying or effort needed at all, in case you still have them and want to use the pans for tubes still

[@helencryer]

Thank you! I ended up just selling them on cheaply, so that the paint will still get used.

[@jude6752]

Love watching you play! It might be a dumb comment, but do you ever do plein air or travel sketching and not have a bottle of water for drinking with you? I just use some of that water...

[@helencryer]

Yes, I definitely don't always carry water! Sometimes I walk out to the coast with what I can fit in a coat pocket, like a palette, travel brush and a mini Talens Art Creations sketchbook.

[@kookatsoonjan]

🤓🤣🤣

[@zenlife1200]

Just a quick question about this set. I'm trying to figure out if you could replace the water bottle in the lid with a couple of travel brushes, a pencil and maybe an eraser? The bottle doesn't look very thick but my travel brushes aren't very thick either. I'd have to block the hole at the end or something would escape but I thought this would be a useful set up.

[@helencryer]

Just had a try - only my smaller Princeton Neptune travel brushes fit in (and I could fit in two, kind of diagonally), my Escodas and Black Velvet travel brushes were too long to fit in even diagonally. You could fit a small pencil and eraser in too. The space is 9.8cm x 5.3cm, and about 1.2cm deep.

[@zenlife1200]

@@helencryer Thank you for trying. It's not as long as it looked I guess. I thought I was on to something for a minute 😄

[@helencryer]

Worth a try!

[@ina_lina]

Hi Helen -- I just got one of these myself, and I'm about to modify it. I'm curious if you've made much use of yours. I love the idea of having at least a little water at the ready for when the opportunity to paint arises (thinking of leaving it in my car).

[@helencryer]

I haven't used it much yet - I keep just grabbing my old metal one!

[@ina_lina]

@@helencryer Thank you for answering. I mostly use my ArtToolKit folio palette these days with 15 colors, but I started looking at the portable painter micro palette and realized for ~$2 more I could get this field pocket palette that holds 12 colors instead of 6. I tend to prefer metal over plastic, but I'm up for a late summer experiment :D

[@maria.3649]

No need to do that though ,you cannot fit more than 14 half pans anyway in that palette.I just removed the sponge and added 2 more pans there.

[@helencryer]

I didn't take out the middle bar in order to fit more pans in, but I needed to be able to fit deeper pans in.

[@awatercolourist]

First! 😊

[@helencryer]

Hi!

[@pastelsgirl]

Yes, indeed! 👋

[@awatercolourist]

@@pastelsgirl hello 👋🏼

[@pastelsgirl]

Hello!

[@triciabennetts6578]

Thankyou Helen 😊 - Would you recommend this travel palette or the Art toolkit one?

[@helencryer]

I don't have an Art Toolkit palette, though I have something similar. Personally I only use it as an additional set, because it doesn't have a very good mixing space, or water/water container, and doesn't hold much volume of paint. I haven't used the one in this video out and about yet, so it's too soon to say, but I suspect I'd prefer it.

[@entropycop]

What brand was that lovely forest blue/green?

[@helencryer]

The Deep Forest is from A. Gallo

[@nope66755]

what is it about the cotman’s you don’t like? good to hear from a pro as I use them but don’t really know what I’m doing 😅

[@helencryer]

I'm definitely not a pro, and for my mediocre kind of level of art, you can probably achieve the same results with the Cotmans, but the professional watercolours are more pigmented, and so I think rewet more easily and you don't have to work as hard to get beautiful richness. I just enjoy the experience more with professional ones. Also the Cotman range is more limited, and doesn't have some of my favourite colours, which tend to be the more characterful paints - the Cotman range seems fairly uniform.

[@loramay21]

What magnetic sheets do you use they look thicker than the ones I have and it isn't very magnetic

[@helencryer]

There's a link for them in the Description box.