Watercolor Review

I'm throwing in a little watercolor review here, while I'm off in Maine...
In the window of the pigment store there are banks of display cases full of colored pigments. I've been wanting to record them and then come home and try to match the colors with paint.

First to match the pigments on my palette,
which by the way, is an old enamel kitchen tray found on Ebay.
And then to match the colors swatches on a test sheet of paper. The next step is to make a painting.

My watercolor teacher, David Dewey, used to say, the painting is first of all, set up on your palette. Get your colors down there first. I used to take pictures of his palette mixings.
Then put it down on the paper.

I'd love to select a few of these bottles and make a painting from just those colors...what's known as doing a "limited palette" painting.

Another Dewey trick - use dirty water to put the washes down on the paper. It's much easier to see where the water is on the white paper if there are bits of pigment in the wash. For most watercolor painters painting with clean water is like religion.

Here's a watercolor palette I'd love to have. A client of Wendy Brandes Jewelry designed this for herself using a poison ring bezel. Claus Oldenburg of the Spoonbridge and Cherry sculpture, said he does most of his idea sketching at the dinner table. Wouldn't this palette ring be a tremendous help painting in Maine?