I'm sitting by my living room window which, for the moment, is in the sun. There are rain clouds coming in, which will make my kids happy because they love their new raincoats and matching rubber boots.
I'll have to take umbrellas down to the bus stop in a little over an hour, and hope that the wind doesn't pop them inside out.
I'm taking a break and writing from the couch today. I've spent a lot of time in my chair at the table this week working on some commissions, and making colour cards from my new set of coloured pencils. I deserve to sit in the soft seats for a little.
The cards are done. I did one for every colour in the tin (72). My husband shook his head at the project, but I know what I'm doing. And now that the cards are all in sleeves and ready for my reference binder I'm ready to start creating with confidence. Doing some tests with my art supplies is really important to me. I can't just fly by the seat of my pants when it comes to creating. Knowing what my supplies will do helps me make good choices that will determine if my work, well, works. Also the experimenting, and discovery are important parts of my process.
These specific pencils are Derwent Inktense pencils. They are water-soluable and the colour when wet is really quite different from the dry colour. Also doing the test cards (showing the dry and wet colours) gave me lots of practice seeing how the pencils work on different supports. Watercolour paper, bristol, Artboard, etc. And it also gave me a ton of practice making images of water drops... which is something I've been working on.
I did the same thing with my acrylic paints. I made a mixing chart for each paint showing how it mixed with different colours and white. It was an incredibly valuable experience and my work has been better for it. I know that a lot of people don't make mixing charts for their paints, but to not do it, to me, would be like trying to choose a colour blindfolded.
All in all, the days of working on these cards have been an investment. And now when I need a specific colour or look I can flip back to my references and be confident that it will be my lack of skill, and not the wrong colour choice that will ruin my piece of art.