 So we've all been there, right, when we just buy a cheap watercolour palette because we just want to test it out. And then we just go that the talkiness is the death of us. So I'm going to show you a little bit of like some tricks that can help you to maybe make this watercolour palette a little bit better. So I got this palette for about $5 and even then I think I was ripped off. It's super cheap, super plasticky, but let's see what the colours are like inside. There are some nice colours here and they do offer you a little bit of a variety for instance, so that's not too bad. It is open. Oh, it broke instantly. Okay, that could be my bad because I've had this for a while, but I'm also going to say it's probably not. I could use this as a palette but also they provide you with these little squares, which is kind of nice. And then the brush is not the worst brush that I've ever seen with these cheap sets. Like the hairs seem a little bit fluffy, which is nice. So yeah, let's see how it goes. Also guys, I would like to remind you that I have Emilia's Burning restocked in my Etsy shop, but also we have Wishing on a Star and the Slow Disappearance of Eleven Ubury. They have just arrived and they come in a pair because they are sister comics and they look absolutely cool and I'm really, really happy with them. So if you guys fancy grabbing these together, then check out my link in the description for Etsy and yeah, they're going to come together like this and I'm really happy and really proud of them. I'm going to use this brush or try to use it for a little bit. What I want to do first is to activate. I've got my little handy water dropper. You can get these droppers pretty much with like, it's kind of the trend now in skincare. So once you've finished it up, they are really handy for just like, no spill water activation. And so, you know, it's kind of handy. I mean, you could just pour a glass of water over these, but it's easier than making a big old mess. But that is entirely up to you. It might not work too well because they are so chalky that it's just kind of like, not working well. The ports are like, some of them are kind of seeping in, but some of them are like, no, this ain't happening. We don't want you. So here we go. Let's use some paper for testing this beautiful palette out. So a good way to get the most out of your watercolor paints is to really keep working it. So lots of the pigment and lots of like the color comes off of this block of chalkiness and you can really get like a lot of color on your brush. This brush is super cheap and this helps if you want to do something like make color really pop and have a lot of pigment to use. So here you go. It's not too bad. The brush is pretty terrible. And then you can add like a lot of water, obviously, to help bring it all together. The brush is not falling apart and it is actually holding water quite well. But it's, if you see, it's like when I try to do like a line, it's kind of blending it all over. If I get a bit of a better brush and I'm just going to grab like a little bit of pigment again and then you can see it with the brush, it's going to be a lot better like cleaner edges. Definitely you need a lot of water with this palette because it is so chalky that it like dries out the color a little bit quicker. But you can see that we get, we do get like a fine amount of color for your buck, which is pretty nice considering it's so cheap. You never know what you could use this for really. It's probably a great like kids beginner's starter pack. I know a lot of people say like don't give kids or I read that online when somebody was like don't give kids cheap art supplies because they're just going to get frustrated with them. But I mean like it's worth learning with them. I kind of agree a little bit but it's kind of what you can afford you know. So if you can only afford like a cheap set, it shows that you can do something cool with them. So now we're going to do like water or water. I'm just wetting really wet in the area and seeing how the pigment is going to spread. So it's wet on wet is this technique with water color. I'm going to use this like pink, pink red color. And you can see we can do some little effects which is kind of nice and we can like maybe blend them a bit. So it's not too bad, it's not like the worst set ever. So obviously I'm using quite like nice expensive paper for this. So I'm thinking like maybe you wouldn't, especially if you could only afford like a cheap color palette. And the way to like maybe get the best results out of that is to use not too much water and just try to be conservative with what you use on the paper. Just be careful not to use too much pigment and water and it should work out a little bit better for you. With these papers they can kind of take a lot of abuse because that's what like you know they've been made to like handle a lot of pigment and a lot of colors. A good way to get the most out of your watercolor palette like your cheap one. Like I said keep trying to work the paint a little bit more, get it like super thick. You can get like a lot of pigment that way and then load your brush up. And make sure like you mix colors together that aren't straight from the palette because sometimes if you do that it looks very, the artwork kind of turns out quite cheap looking somehow. And it seems like oh they've just used the color straight from the palette. It's kind of like a generic thing and it does show. So if you make like your own colors you can get a more interesting look and feel to your painting. So I'm just going to do like a quick set of colors maybe that go together. And see like here we have like a much richer color, much more interesting color than just like the basics. Not that these colors are too bad but I think sometimes when you buy a cheap set they can just come with like really basic colors. So you want to just really like branch out and see what you can create yourself. And that way you can get a lot more out of your palette. These paints are not too bad. I was expecting them to be a lot but a lot worse. So there's that but I think like each thing is a little bit different. For instance like trying to get color off this purple it's a little bit less juicy. If that makes sense then say this one that one like kind of like gave me a lot of color really quickly. Because this one I'm kind of working for a while and it's still not giving me too much off that color. So I'm going to make like a cool purple. I'm going to get a little bit of this red which is kind of like nice and juicy. And add it to my purple to make it kind of darker. So I found this iconic scene from Studio Zubli. You know the Spurs of the Wave film where they're on the train and they're driving past the house. I actually already painted this in another video but I think it would be interesting to try and see what it could look like with these cheap paints and see if I can create a similar look and feel. So they are kind of drying pretty fast. It could be the paper though a little bit more than. So I'm trying to keep working with it a little bit wetter than I usually would. So far I'm not hating how it's looking. It's kind of nice. So we've got this really like yellowy island here. So I want to mix a really yellowy green. Another tip is probably don't mix your colors on top of other colors because that probably will ruin your cheap paints but here we go. You can really get some good colors if you just like work them up a little bit yourself. I'm working quite quickly as well which you can probably tell. I think probably need to work a little bit quickly. Oh shoot. Always have a handy cloth with you basically. Pulling up your mistakes. Right so for consistency I kind of want to stick with the color palette that I've made here. Even though there's lots of colors for me to use. If I stick with, sorry pour in my coffee. If I stick with a similar color palette as in using a range of these colors that I've made it will make the painting just seem like it belongs together. Like all parts of components of it belongs in the same lighting, the same scene, the same tones. So for instance if I went in suddenly with like this really bright purple it just would be like a little bit strange and it can happen. You can always break rules but I think it's always a good idea to try and stick to the color palette that you've created. So here I'm going to use like this purple with this to kind of make a different tone for the clouds in the distance. So I'm going to just do this and then I'm going to outline the house over here. I'll also use this as my shadows. My base and my shadows. So something cool about cheap watercolor palettes is because it's so chalky you can kind of like use a little bit of the chalkiness when it dries out as a bit of a guideline for where you want to go. So it kind of works nicely. You can make like a bit of a texture as well to indicate like some shadows in this area. You can use a bit of dry brushing with the chalkiness. And if you get some interesting effects like obviously watercolors are probably not supposed to be used too much like that but it doesn't mean that you can't have fun with it and try to do something a little bit different to what you were doing. So I need a bit of this orange now and I think it's looking a little bit too dark so I'm going to go with this pinky a little bit in this corner and try and make it a little bit more pink. So we're just trying our best really with these colors that we've been given these cheap paints but we're going to have fun with it as well. Like there's no reason why it needs to be like the worst thing ever that you've ever used. Like you can still try to make good with what you've got. If we're not having fun then what's the point right? So let's do this. And I'm going to use a little bit of this to like darken the areas because when I'm looking at the Studio Ghibli clouds they have really like created like a darkness there as well. And I'm going to use some of that color on the shadow of this house to like have some cohesion again in the painting. So it's not looking terrible. I kind of like the effect it's giving me. It's like not the worst thing ever. So I'm kind of pleased with this so far. You just got to work really carefully and don't like layer down too much all at once because there's no going back with water color as well. A little bit of orange just fine. Super pink cloud here. I think I'm about to get attacked by a kitten. Cuteness. Muchy. You cannot be here. She just climbed up the back of the desk. She's absolutely psycho. I want to do some highlights so I can kind of use this paint a bit opacally if I keep doing the trick of like keep twisting the pigment around. So you can see I'm getting like a really thick amount on my paintbrush. I can kind of use it a little bit and paint which is nice. And that's something you probably don't tend to get with like more expensive watercolors because it's made for like the pigment to kind of spread quite easily. So that's another like advantage of cheap paints. I'm going to see advantage because... So yeah I want to use this really opacally because this is really a bright cloud up here. Oh my gosh she's coming back guys. She's coming back. She's crazy. This cat is crazy. Don't do it. Muchy. Muchy. Oh my god. So let's go back over that because she super smudged it. You can probably see that the colours are getting a little bit muddy. And that's because I haven't changed my water in a while so I'm going to go and pop and change that and then we'll see a difference. I'll also clean my brush. Pro tip. Always clean your stuff. Lots of colour suddenly appearing and it's becoming really fluffy, really bubbly which is good. And I'm just going to show you what it looks like on this test paper. Obviously we've got some bubbles there but we can work them off but it kind of makes the chalkiness go away and makes the paints last a bit longer. So if I do the same thing with a colour that hasn't been activated with it, let's go for this like purple. I think there must be some... Oh my brush. So I'm going to get a different brush to show you. So let's say this purple, yeah. Let's do the same amount. You guys are a little bit bubbly but not as much as we got with the green and then I'm going to do the same thing where I just like try and show you the difference. So you can see like it's not quite as smooth the pigment. So if you want to do like a big wash of colour, it's kind of like better. I don't know. It was a small tip I learned when I was younger. See it's like super frothy. More bang for your buck I would say. A smoother colour. Not sure if it's like entirely true but I think it works a little bit. Okay so obviously it's not the best painting that I've ever done but it's also not too bad. It's quite nice and it shows you that you can do a lot with what you've got. This was $5 and obviously it's a little bit chalky but if you want to have fun with watercolours or just try them out then maybe it is kind of the route for you. This was fun to do and I hope that you guys enjoyed this little kind of tips video. Anyway I hope that you guys enjoyed it and I will see you next time. Please like this video if you enjoyed it and I will appreciate that. Thanks again to my patrons. They are all these people and you guys are super lovely. I am really hoping to get more people onto Patreon so I can probably do this full time which would be awesome. But yeah at the moment I am not. Anyway see you guys next time and thanks for everything. Bye.