New Inspirations

(C) 2016 Dale DiMauro

With the passing of winter come new inspirations for spring. I have started three little watercolors since friday. One is a flower painting, another a study for a self-portrait and the last is this little picture above.

Around my birthday in April I bought a new plastic palette with big wells for paint, which I need to break-in. I had been looking for some time I must add, for a good quality palette. The palettes I have used are hard to clean, particularly all the difficult to reach corners of the little wells. Many palettes stain and even crack over time. Regardless, I find the mixing areas to be inadequate for my use. The new palette is a John Pike palette with sturdy construction and seemingly accessible paint wells and two large mixing areas.

Recently, I purchased and read Mastering Watercolors: a practical guide by Joe Cartwright, which I learned of through facebook. I took from reading this book the importance of having a good quality spray bottle. Not your typical household plant spray bottle but a small container which conveys a fine mist instead of a jet stream. The little dark container in my photograph above, towards the bottom, is my atomizer, as my wife states. My wife was given this little bottle many years back when it contained some sort of perfume. It has been rinsed out numerous times yet still contains a subdued fragrance. However, the spray mechanism works great and the container is a nice portable size for outdoor painting. This atomizer is valuable for two reasons. First it is great for misting your dry pigments just as you are about to start painting. The other reason it is useful is for keeping the area of your painting moist that you want to work on.