30th May 2019: I wanted to include some wetting agent in the paintbox. So I removed the white full pan, replaced it by a blue full pan, and put the wetting agent in.
Here’s Watercolour Box 2:
Jackson’s Cobalt Blue 245, full pan
Rembrandt Vandyke Brown 403, half pan
Jackson Prussian Blue 261, full pan
Schminke Ox gall wetting agent, half pan, horadam medium 14 031
Rembrandt Naples Yellow-red 234, half pan
Jacksons Alizarin Crimson 194, half pan
Rembrandt Cadmium Red Medium 314, half pan
Jacksons Yellow Ochre 315, full pan
Rembrandt Cadmium Yellow 234, half pan
Jackson’s Indian yellow 121, full pan
Jane Sketching 
I do like to see a well-used paintbox, even more than a pristine one. Haven’t tried ox gall (and didn’t know it came in pans, have only seen bottles. how much difference does it make to your sketching? do you only need it with some colours?
LikeLike
Hello JayP – yes the paintbox takes on a character doesn’t it?
I bought the wetting agent because I had a sketchbook which was very heavily sized – so heavily sized that the paint stood on the surface in droplets. My idea was that the wetting agent would help, which it did.
I just wiped the brush on it and put it in the water I was using.
I also have a small dropper bottle of wetting agent. I use that, with gum arabic, to make paints. I recommend doing this, it’s great fun. I just found some earth of a good colour, ground it with a stone, and mixed it with gum arabic and with a few drops of the wetting agent, and let it dry in a bottle lid. It needed a bit more wetting agent to dampen it and make it useable. And then my landscapes matched the colour of the terrain exactly!
(see for example this instagram post:
But in general I don’t use wetting agent atall. The sketchbooks I use most of the time have paper that wets easily.
LikeLike