I have been feeling a little tense that it is less than 2 weeks till I leave on a big overseas trip and I don’t know what colours are going to be in my palette. Well tonight I made the final decisions. The shocking thing is that I am not taking Quin Burnt Orange or Cobalt Deep Blue …well not as separate colours. They will be there in my mixed “steel’s grey”.

This means that I am taking Transparent Red Oxide instead..the big battle between TRO and QBO had a surprising result.

  
I um-ed and ah-ed about the greens and in the end Jadeite won…even though it has some fun granulating effects.(can always buy a pan of W&N if it doesn’t work out) I just love Indanthrone BLue and use it often to mix my blacks..so it took the place of the second green. Also, I have a hankering for a mixed purple in my palette.

Whilst there is little merit in sharing these messy mixing pages with you all as such, I hope that you can understand the process that I am going through. I am testing the colours and my standard mixes to see what are the most versatile.

I am very excited about my radical palette change in recent weeks – the colours I am getting on my page (on the rare occasions when I get a chance to sketch) feel so vibrant and fresh and new… and hoping they will lead to a new step in my painting when my holiday (vacation) begins next week.

Now my only decision is how many pans of each to take….