After a couple low-buy years of restocking paints, 2025 was a year of exploration and experimenting with my art supplies and watercolour palettes. I developed a main/expansion palette system for myself, and tried new pigments to expand my colour mixing knowledge and find replacements for discontinued favourites. My updated palette reflects everything I learned this year. In the process of experimenting, I learned a lot about myself and what works for me. So I decided to update my main watercolour palette to reflect everything I discovered. Enjoy a colour mixing chart of the new palette, which tested my patience!

When life feels chaotic and unstable, it can be hard to carry on creating art the same way. In this art journal entry I share how I change my approach to using my sketchbook and drawing tools in difficult times, to make sure I keep doing the thing I love: sketching.

Sometimes what grabs our interest or sparks inspiration can come in simple everyday moments. Like picking apples in your grandparent’s garden. Taking the time to notice these things and record them down is something that I value more and more each time I do it.

Sketching supplies in hand, I revisited an art exhibit I visited earlier in the year. The Ruskin Collection rotates out occasionally, and this time the exhibit was themed around colour. Watercolour pigments, natural fabric dyes, colourful paintings, and old sketchbooks filled with studies. One looking particularly like how I use my own...

Being an artist involves so much more than time spent glued to the drawing board. Recently I went on a walk through Sheffield Botanical Gardens to help inspire my upcoming dryad illustration series. Join me on a wander and a ramble about creative inspiration.

In this desert-island scenario I'm choosing a limited palette that I would hypothetically spend the rest of my life with. It was a difficult choice, and made me consider what pigment properties are the most important to me such as transparency and granulation. Want to join in? This challenge is open to the art community. At the bottom of the post you can find different ways to join!

I confess, there have been some big changes to my main watercolour palette. Thanks to the painting system I started using towards the start of the year, I’ve discovered more about what helps me in my painting process. This palette upgrade takes what I’ve learnt and applies it, to hopefully make my process even more enjoyable and suited to my preferences. For some reason I decided to test my artistic patience by hand painting a full palette mixing chart to commemorate the occasion.

Haunted by the hyper-optimisation ghost? Art is so much more than raw output. Forcing it while ignoring how ephemeral and individual creativity can be is a recipe for burnout and crashing. Recently I've had to slow things down myself, so I'm journaling on my own relationship with the ebbs and flows of creativity, the benefits of rest, and aspects of creativity beyond grinding output.

Binder splitting from pigment in paint tubes is a common occurrence with some easy fixes, but did you know binder can separate even from paint on your palette? What can you do when this happens? Well, the answer isn’t quite as simple as stirring a paint tube.

An art journal entry where I ramble about my current thoughts on digital illustration, letting mediums be what they are, and painting mindsets.

Let's demystify how to mix a range of earth tones using orange in watercolour. From deep browns to earthy reds and yellows. I'll take you through my thought process with the example of mixing with Pyrrole Orange. We'll look at a finished painting and mixing chart using this orange, and how I mixed earth tones with it. Earth pigments are wonderful for convenience, so why learn to mix earth tones without them? It can help you practice colour mixing theory, learn how to make interesting hues, and help increase the range of limited palettes for you to use. Mixing with complementary colours is a staple part of colour theory, yet there are a whole world of mixes available to you by utilising near-complements too.

Can I fall in love with Pyrrole Orange? Let's find out! Today I'll share a mixing chart featuring its pigment properties, and some colour mixes with my favourite everyday pigments. I made sure to use the same pigments as for the Transparent Orange PO107 chart, so that the two oranges can be compared.

My first moleskine sketchbook ended in disaster. The binding fell apart only a few spreads in. Ouch! Three years later I’m giving it another go. Rediscovering how the paper acts with my favourite art supplies, and whether the sketchbook can hold up to daily use this time.

Transparent Orange PO107 from Winsor and Newton is a relative new and uncommon orange pigment in the watercolour scene. Let's explore some of its pigment properties and create a colour mixing chart with some of my favourite pigments. I'll also share my experience using it as part of a limited palette for an illustration.

With my favourite watercolour pigment discontinued and running out, I now embark on a quest to find its successor. With colour mixing charts at the ready and limited palettes to explore, who will be the victor? The warm red throne lay empty, waiting for its new monarch.

Choosing what scanner is best for you is dependant on the characteristics you need. For an entry level scanner specifically for artwork, this is what I chose and my initial results with it so far.

Artist Journal Entry: musings about facing possibilities bombarding you when drawing, navigating choice overwhelm, and how internal skills can be developed alongside art skills. All while sketching a… warrior knight man? Sounds about right.

Watercolour pigments often have a range of hues and properties available, and PV19 is a great example of this. When I was a beginner to watercolour I started with a split primary that used Quinacridone Rose as the cool red. Years later, I am curious about its sister Quinacridone Violet. Both are the same pigment number, but with very different hues and producing different colour mixes as a result. Let’s dive in to some first impression discoveries about Violet-PV19!

Art supplies change or get discontinued entirely more frequently than people may realise. Rather than letting discontinuations be all doom and gloom, I want to share with you all the joy and help that an old pigment has given me in my painting practice over the years. Today we’ll be looking at Transparent Pyrrol Orange by Daniel Smith - but the much redder version that was discontinued before 2019 - and the process of a tiger painting.

A few months ago I changed my watercolour palette set up to see if it would help my painting process and creativity. Now that I have experience using the new palette system in practice, do I think its working for me?