Great Fun with the Peanut Gallery on Periscope Yesterday

We covered quite a lot of information on watercolor brushes, how to test pigments for opacity and a bit about watercolor paper during the live broadcast of my free watercolor lesson.  It was such a lot of fun! Whilst trying to sidetrack me with questions about the condition of water in my rinsing jar and cadmium yellow, the peanut gallery kept up a steady stream of great questions and hilarious comments. You can still see the replay at Katch.me/michelecoopart after 4:30pm today.

I feel that the world standard for watercolor brushes is the Winsor & Newton Series 7. I checked after the broadcast and the cost of a #8 round Winsor and Newton series 7 sable watercolor brush is $175.00. That price is a bit steep for beginners! See a discussion of the source for sable brushes here. http://www.dickblick.com/kolinsky/sable/

The three recommended student brushes in the illustration above are the synthetic Simply Simmons line: 1" Flat Aquarel, #3 rigger, and #8 or #10 round. These are under $5.00 each and give a similar silky action. Add a Pentel Aquash waterbrush for sketching, the Yarka 12 color set of watercolor moist pans, and a DIY accordion sketchbook and you're ready for urban sketching.

I recommend Fabriano Artistico or Arches 140# Cold Press watercolor paper, purchased in whole sheets and divided for practice exercises taught in this free lesson. You can use both sides. If you plan to do mostly ink and watercolor work, then you may even prefer the Fabriano Studio 140# paper for practice. It has a smooth hard surface compared to the aforementioned paper.

Please let me know if you have any other questions.