How to Set Up Watercolor Supplies for Painting

How you set up your watercolor supplies for painting matters, even if your space is your kitchen table like me! Read on to find out my tips and tricks for setting up watercolor supplies.

We are going to talk this through as if we are talking about the perfect world.  Now, do NOT walk away from reading this and think, well, that’s too hard so I can’t get creative.  NO siree!  I often play art amongst models, school papers, books, computers, you name it, but when I have time to set up my supplies on a clean table and put some soft spa music on in the background, it’s next level stuff.

So now that we talked through that, allow me to invite you into my home and to my table to see how I set up my supplies when the stars align and I have space and time:

*It should be noted here that I’m a lefty.   If you are right handed, this would be reversed (art supplies on the right and subject to the left).

A Tour

Let’s start with the top right corner and go clockwise, shall we?

• First we have my little pouch in which I carry all of my essential art items like my sketching pencil, erasers: big, medium, and small, my best black drawing pens, etc.
• Next is the subject I’ll be drawing/painting.  Today’s subject is this beautiful Tiger Swallowtail butterfly in the round pic (bottom of the left hand page in the book).
• Third is my watercolor paper, my sketching pencil, and a kneaded eraser, all of which I have on top of a strong piece of cardboard.  Where did I get this?  Well, it’s the back of a watercolor paper pad of course!  Always keep these, they are great for placing under your drawing, painting, stamping, etc. just to keep your table surface clean.

Pro tip: kneaded erasers are used to roll over the graphite of your sketch after you get it just right.  It removes a lot of the graphite and leaves a faint outlines you can use as guidelines when you paint.

• To the left of my paper is my favorite ceramic palette. Ceramic palettes are very easy to use and clean.  There are small ones and big ones and even rose shaped ones!
• Above the palette is my patented style of how I keep my paper towel and water.

This one deserves some explaining: When you do watercolor, you use a lot of water (go figure), and you are dipping your brush in and out of that water constantly, which makes a mess.  The other thing I do a lot is blot my brush on my paper towel.  By the end of this painting, that paper towel will be soaking wet and that is not good on a wood table.

To keep everything neat and tidy, I use a little rectangle plate and place a paper towel folded in half (double the strength!) on top and then my water on top of that.  This way, when I dip my brush in the water and blot it, it all just stays contained on that little plate.  AND, here’s the bonus, my brush sits nicely across it and the tip does not get smooshed. Feel free to steal this idea!

• Then I have a jar of brushes in all sizes and shapes, but I mostly use round brushes sizes 2-8, my favorite is a round size 8.
• Lastly I have my watercolors and their swatches so I know what they look like on watercolor paper.  The swatches are essential and if you haven’t made swatches for yours, do it!

How do YOU set up your table when you have space and time?

Kimberly Snider, virtuoso, Signing Off

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