We drove through the night, arriving in Rocky Mount at 4:00 AM. This was painted the next evening, using the Windsor-Newton Cotman Watercolor Field Box
Windsor Newton sells two small portable watercolor sets - the Cotman set, which is about half the price of the "Artists" Set is designed for students and uses hues in place of the more expensive pigments. This is all the better, since the hues work fine for sketchbooks, and if you really want a specific color palate, you can obviously fill the pans with any tube colors you want. There are subtle differences between pan and tube colors, but the vast majority of artists find it simpler to just refill pans with tubes. If it works for them, etc etc.
You can bring your own brushes if the included travel brush is insufficient, and the top makes a good water container, but my personal preference is the hottest new tech on the block - water brushes. Thankfully, these can be found at most art stores, but they are super cheap from amazon, and they're the most versatile art tool I've ever seen.
You can fill them with pigments such as colored inks for fountain pens, you can fill them with pre-mixed ink and water for grey washes, you can fill them with water and use them on top of watercolor pencils (something I'll go into in a further post), and, in the case above, you can use them with the field box set to paint very easily.
You will find that they differ from traditional watercolors in a couple significant ways. As you grab pigment from one of the pans onto the mixing surface, the more you work it, the more it becomes diluted - this means that you have to be careful not to overwork a pigment puddle, or you'll lose it entirely. Second, as you are putting the paint on the paper, it will become lighter and lighter as the water continues to dilute what's on the brush. That means you have to work from dark to light, at least on the small scale. laying in your shadow edges and then blending it back, rather than vice versa.
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