Michael Wilcox (School of Colour) Watercolour Palette

As I posted earlier in the month, Michael Wilcox's School of Colour have made some refinements to their watercolour palette.  I really didn't have a good, commodious studio palette - I have the small ones, which I could take out in the field with me (if I still did that - it's a bit onerous these days), such as the Liz Deakin - but I also have a School of Colour oil/acrylic palette, and thought I'd lay out the £30 or so needed to get the watercolour one (also fine for gouache, inks and dyes; and I'm sure for the most fluid acrylics).   It IS a sizeable item - 11" by 11", made out of melamine, with good wells for mixing colour, and the colours printed into the melamine, so they shouldn't scratch or fade, enabling you to identify at a glance the complementaries to each of the colours in the Wilcox recommended palette (Cadmium Yellow Light; Hansa (Lemon); Raw Sienna; Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna; Quinacridone Violet; Cadmium Red Light; Pthalo Green; Ultramarine; Cerulean; Pthalo Blue; Titanium White).  I do - more or less - confine myself to this palette, with occasional substitutions - and it's a very good one for learning/teaching purposes.  It arrived speedily, despite a warning that it might take longer to get here owing to the present plague, and properly, professionally packaged to boot (though - don't boot it..).   And my impressions are, over and above what I've said above - it's a very useful tool, that'll enable you to splash about to your heart's content with your paint; even for someone who's been painting for over half a century, the colour/complementary information is extremely useful; and for the serious watercolourist I'd say it would be a good investment. Now, I'm not really a serious watercolourist: I sell very few watercolours, and don't try to, particularly, on the grounds that you can't do everything (especially if you're as lazy as I am).  But I feel with this that I easily COULD become a great deal more serious - I no longer have any real excuse not to - so I've got the brushes (not least thanks to the generosity of the great Alan Owen, who has sent me some of his, unprompted!), I've got the Arches paper, I've got quite a bit of watercolour and gouache, and now I've got the palette.  So all I need is the talent, which they don't supply by post......  But I do believe in painters giving themselves the best chance to make a creditable picture - and if you were wondering about what you should buy, well you can count me a devotee of this product (and I have no shares in the company, either).  If you get one, I'd be very interested to read your opinion of it.

Two years passes very quiickly - when you reach a certain age..  But, I still have and use the palette; do I recommend it: on the whole yes, but it has to be remembered that it serves a particular purpose, to direct your eye from your base colour to its nearest complementary.  Sooner or later, this becomes imprinted on the brain, and maybe was imprinted on mine before I bought the palette,  For those who need that extra bit of guidance, however, it's a great teaching tool.  Complications may drift in, when you extend your range of colours beyond the 12 sold by Michael Willcox (as we inevitably will, responding to suggestion or just plain temptation) but they really needn't: you can still identify the primaries whatever range you use, and as there's only one red-leaning blue, it's not hard to locate that (it's Ultramarine).  The other colour wells can be treated reasonably approximately - it shouldn't be hard, especially once you've used the Willcox range, to identify an orange yellow, orange red, and so on.  So I would say the palette is useful - very much so for beginners or those who have trouble with colour-mixing; over time, it becomes less useful other than as a straightforward, large palette, but I certainly don't regret its purchase.