I have been spending a long time organising and playing with my watercolour paints recently.

I think I spend more time playing and practicing with my paints than I do finishing pieces of art, but I do believe this is the best way to learn.

First of all I prepared my own little travel set. I purchased this tiny empty metal watercolour box which would hold 12 half pans.

But I removed the metal insert trays inside which gave me so much more room. I then re configured the layout so that it would take 24 half pans. I glued in my own half pans and filled them with my preferred colours to create my unique palette. I finished off the paint palette by painting and inserting a reference chart of the colours and Voila!

This is such a portable size 5″ x 3″ and perfect for travelling. Plus of course I now have a larger choice of colours for such a small tin.

Then I spent a great deal of time preparing and loading my paints into my large watercolour carousel which I keep in my art room.

I purchased this carousel online from Robax. It spins around so it is easy to access all the colours. It is probably a little larger than I needed (15″ diameter) and maybe the next size down would have been more practical and taken up less room.

Now it was time to play.

I often spot colours that accidentally fall together on my art table and I suddenly notice what a great colour combination they are and they inspire me, so I decided that when I notice these I would paint the colours together on a piece of watercolour paper as a reminder reference. So I painted a few that I liked and then threaded them on a chain to hang up in my art room.

I can look at these when I need inspiration. But of course this is just a beginning and I will add to the colour chain as I find more great colour combinations. I think I will also paint some three colour combinations too.

Finally, I decided to make myself a reference book of watercolour techniques that I have discovered. So I painted out the ideas and made notes with each technique.

I then got out my Cinch Binder for the first time.

It was incredibly fast and easy to use. I used it to put together this little book. I left some spare blank pages at the end for me to add techniques as I discover more.

Once again this makes a good reference for inspiration.

So all in all I thought my play days were an excellent way of learning more about watercolours.

I wonder if you have got any great watercolour techniques, video links or website pages with ideas for me to add to my techniques book? If so I would love it if you could share them in the comments.