New Watercolor Supplies?

Creative Arts
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Are the new watercolor supplies in the plastic drawers for a specific class or for everyone to use? Is there a fee to use them?

Thanks,
Amna

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I’m guessing @uglyknees (Nicole) would be best equipped to respond & by calling it to her attention, I’ll bet she will…

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The watercolor supplies were donated by our angel donator who wishes to remain anonymous but is fantastic and possibly an art saint but I’m not sure because I haven’t seen a halo yet. I would like to collect a donation for the use of the materials just because they are such high quality media we won’t be able to replace them easily when they are used up without adequately balancing it out. I planned on sitting down and doing some math and creating a lovely sign…but I haven’t…Sooooooo

Some of the items are reserved for the watercolor class - I will mark them tonight.

But the trouble is…how much do you donate? How do you gauge usage?
The yellow watercolor paper “pads” are $13 a piece. Per sheet it would be…let’s say $2 - this is for the yellow pad paper.
The finer watercolor paper in boxes I will need to really investigate. But let’s say you kick a buck or two to the donation bin when you paint. Watercolor only needs a bit of paint from the tube but the tube can be very expensive dependent on color.
So let’s say you kick in $3-5 per watercolor painting. That’s a very reasonable deal to explore the media for now.

Let’s hold off on the larger, nicer paper for now.

Please make sure to clean your items when you are complete and put items back where they belong. I’m very happy you get to enjoy them and I know our art donor will be happy for them to have use here as well.

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Useful information from Cleaning watercolor brushes

Cleaning watercolor brushes

After a painting session it can be easy to blow off proper care of your brushes. It is a necessity with other permanent binder paints like oils and acrylics. If you don’t clean the brush after your painting session, you lose it.

Watercolor is more forgiving, but over time pigment, dirt, and binder can become embedded where the hair meets the ferrule. This can cause the hairs to spread a bit and your brush point or edge will become less and less useful over time. Let’s proceed with cleaning your brushes. It’s easy.

You’ll need the following:

  • Dirty Brushes, still damp.
  • A bar of soap Ivory has been my soap of choice, but I use anything that seems mild and organic in nature. You’re working with hair here so don’t condition the hair with lotion laced soaps. Special
    artist’s brush cleaner soaps are available. Don’t use any soap with abrasives like pumice.
  • Paper towels or “work” towels.

Cleaning your watercolor brush step-by-step:

  • Gather your used brushes by a sink, start some warm water running.
  • With open palm in the running water, gently dab and swirl the brush in your palm until the water runs clean.
  • Moisten bar of soap.
  • Take your wet brush and in a gentle circular motion work some soap into the hair.
  • Wet your palm again and repeat the dabbing and swirling motion with the soap charged brush.
  • Rinse and repeat until suds stay white and brush is clean.
  • Do a final rinse to remove all the residual soap.
  • Gently shake, squeeze or dab water out of brush using towels.
  • Reform damp brush hairs to their original shape with your fingers and let them dry on a flat surface such as a dry terrycloth hand towel.
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I think 3-5$ is very reasonable, especially with such high quality supplies. Even the brushes are amazing! I spent a few good minutes just drooling over them. Thanks for the info. And thank you for the info on washing the brushes!

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