Right now in my John Pike palette I have mostly Daniel Smith watercolors. I have to say that Daniel Smith knows what they are doing when making watercolors. One of the prerequisites for me with a watercolor is that it will dry nicely in the palette. I hate it when they break up and crumble, and many brands do just that. I have had good luck with Daniel Smith with the paint drying nicely and re-wetting well. Daniel Smith also has a large choice of colors. Right now I have both of “Susie Short’s” choices plus two Maimeri Blu colors, both violet one reddish and one more blue. Maimeri Blu also has nice watercolors that are a good price, and they dry and re-wet well on the palette. I love these violets. The bluish one is my favorite. Speaking of favorite colors, my favorite red at the moment is Daniel Smiths Quinicrindone coral. I love this color. One of my paintings is done with this color and lots of it. It is the gladiola painting. Titled “Karen’s Gladiola’s”. This red can be quite bright and is on the warm side. But if used in a diluted wash it has a wonderful peachy pink tone. It is gorgeous! My favorite yellow is Daniel Smiths “New Gamboge” The first time I tried the color New Gamboge was with a Winsor and Newton tube. The color was wonderful. The problem is that Winsor and Newtons watercolors do not dry nicely on the palette. They tend to crumble and flake. They have wonderful colors and many artists use them as their standards, but I just hate that flaking on the palette! I was pleased when I found Daniel Smiths New Gamboge. It is a must have for any palette in my opinion. My favorite blue is of course Daniel Smiths French Ultramarine Blue. I like the regular Ultramarine Blue as well. I do love Quinicrindone Rose for a cooler red, and Hansa Yellow medium for a cool yellow and I like cobalt blue and pthalo blue for the cooler blues. All of these from Daniel Smith watercolors. I always have sap green in my palette as well (DS) and I also like pthalo green(DS). I have yet to try the Primatek colors made from natural earth and stones. I think I need a new palette just for those.

Speaking of palettes, currently I am using the original John Pike Palette. Many artists use this one and so I thought I would give it a try. I like that it is a strong plastic. It isn’t likely to break easily or to crack like some of the other ones on the market. What I don’t like though is that the wells only have tiny “lip” facing the middle section that is used for mixing washes. Frequently the wash colors find their way into colors on the palette. I have to say, I would much rather have a small wall there so this can’t happen. It drives me nuts. I guess I must use surfaces that are not quite level, because I find the washes moving towards the colors depending on the way I have the palette laid out. I often paint and then leave the palette with the wash color in the middle to use later. Well, even if I don’t move the palette on purpose it tends to get in the other colors and makes a big muddy mess. This means that I have to clean all this up and make a new wash when I want to get started again. Not my favorite thing to do! I think I will try a new palette soon. I’m not sure which one to try though. I have a few here that I like, but what I want is one with enough wells for my standard palette. One that has four sides to the wells, and a nice middle area to mix in. I’m thinking this area could be separated into two areas. It should be made of a strong plastic that won’t break or crack easily and it should have a good cover that stays on nicely and doesn’t let anything spill out. (That is one nice thing about the John Pike Palette). It would be nice to have some big wells for bigger brushes as well. I have a Zoltan Szabo palette that I like. But, it isn’t big enough really and the cover isn’t very sturdy. Still it is a nice palette with a different layout. Right now it has mostly blues and purples in it. I can’t remember what painting I was using it for when I put those colors on it. It was a long time ago. I bought it in 2004 when we were living in Silver City New Mexico for the winter. It came with a 1&1/2 inch slanted brush for washes and the techniques that Zoltan Szabo uses in his books. I have used the Jones palette and liked it but it has a cracked and broken cover. The plastic is not very sturdy on that cover either. I also have a color wheel one from Jones. I have never been very fond of the color wheel palettes. That is just my preference.

My favorite brushes are of course kolinsky sable brushes. They hold a lot of color so you don’t have to recharge your brush as often as with synthetic brushes, and they keep their shape nicely too. I have some synthetic brushes, but they just do not perform like the kolinsky sable ones. I do have some sable and synthetic mixed brushes that I like pretty well too. They can hold a good amount of paint in them and they keep their shape very well and they cost a whole lot less than the Kolinsky sable brushes. These would be my recommendations for anyone who wants a good brush at a good price. You can find them at any good art store or art store online. Cheap Joe’s has their version of this as well as Windsor and Newton(which I own) and several other brands. I use a 1/2 inch flat wash synthetic brush to mix washes with. It is just a good size for this. I’m not sure why I started to use this one brush for this, but it has become solely my mixing brush. I have some goat hair brushes that work well for large area washes. I have a big oval one and two larger flat wash brushes for this. They are also good for glazing. I do have a small 1″ bristle brush from Zoltan Szabo. I have yet to really put it to good use. I do intend to work on some of his techniques in the upcoming months and would be happy to report on how well this brush works for that.

Well, that is it for my choices at this time. As I use more tools, I will talk about them here and give my critique. I am not employed by Daniel Smith or any other brand that I like and use. I do not get any kind of monetary reimbursement either. These are just my opinions and my favorite supplies to use.

Back to handling stress. My youngest daughter called me the other day and was almost in tears. She was so stressed out. It was partly due to a new job and how they were treating her, but also due to school and trying to keep her grades up etc. I think one of the most important things to learn in this life is how to handle stress in a good, positive way. It isn’t taught in school, though I think it should be a required course. I know for me, I didn’t learn any healthy ways of dealing with stress as a kid. And I was stressed a great deal of the time. I was a serious kid and often thought of all the bad things that could happen to me or in the world. Many bad things did happen to me. I was molested at the age of ten by some neighborhood boys. And this happened again when I was twelve with someone else. At the age of 18 I was raped, by my then boyfriend. No one even knew what date rape was and of course I didn’t tell anyone for fear that they would blame me. I don’t really know how all these things came to be, but in my mind subconcious or otherwise, I was the victim. Once you are a victim, you tend to go into “victim” mode when you are stressed or are facing something scary. At the age of 12 I started to have seizures. I was in the hospital for a week having all the tests to determine the cause. At one point, I was told by a friend that my family had talked about the possibility of me having a brain tumor. Nice of her to tell me don’t ya think? I was terrified. I thought I was going to die. They couldn’t find the reasons for the seizures, but put me on medication for them. At the age of 13, I started to have bad tension headaches. This headache never went away. It just got worse or better but was always present. I had this until I was 16. At the time I was put on phenobarbital for the headaches. So, I was on dilantin for seizures(nasty side effects too) and phenobarb for my headaches. Is it any wonder that I fell asleep in so many classes? In 8th grade, one of my EEG’s showed seizures. So, now they knew where they were coming from. I stayed on dilantin until my senior year when the seizures were getting worse and so they kept trying to switch my meds around. I was having reactions to many of them(no fun let me tell you) and while having an EEG, the neurologist injected me with something that was supposed to induce a seizure. I didn’t have one. He started screaming at me that I was faking and how could I waste his time etc. Well, what we didn’t know was that this test was not reliable and often caused people without seizures to have them and people with seizures to not have them and the test was later discredited etc. But at the time, they all thought it was “psychological” I had to see a shrink. She told me that what was happening to me was not unlike the “hysteria” that surrounded the witches in Salem and she had me read a book about the witch trials etc. nice huh. Talk about damaging to a young person. She also thought that I was having difficulties with my sexuality(being raised Catholic and all). So our sessions revolved around sex education–kind of a waste of time really and money come to think of it. Sigh, thus begins a pattern in my life. I have had doctors tell me I do have a seizure disorder and doctors who say they can’t find anything so I don’t have one. And, I know that the cause of seizures is often unknown. They just don’t know enough about the brain. Yes, medical science has come a long way, but they still do not have enough information about the brain and how it works. Stress has played a big role in my life in how I didn’t handle it well and how I am now so sick. So much of it is due to the fact that for many years I had constant stress, the kind that your body is in a constant “fight or flight” mode. Most of this was due to my marriage at the time. It was very stressful and I am a stuffer. I stuff my feelings until I can’t take it anymore and then I get sick. It is why my adrenals are no longer working right. They are responsible for dealing with these stresses and produce many hormones that your body needs to compensate. My problem is that they had to over compensate for my stress over the years and have now given out on me. So, I am taking hydrocortisone because my body no longer makes enough cortisol to handle these stresses. Of course this is a basic simplified version of it and it is way more complicated with many more hormones involved. My doc in AZ will no longer give me the hydrocort. I need to find a new doc but in the meantime I have been weaning off the hydrocort. It has been difficult at best. Once again I can’t spend more than 15 minutes up and if I do I get really sick. When I get sick all I can do is lay down. I can’t take more hydrocort like my body needs in time of stress, because I will run out. So, I am hoping that I can wean off without ending up in the hospital. This means I can not do very much. I spend most of my day in bed and much of that is spent sleeping. My bodies way of compensating I guess. I do have a lead on a good doc and will call her the day after Christmas. I hope she is taking new patients. I have learned ways of coping with stress that are healthier like meditation and just letting go of things I have no control over. I owe many of my coping skills to Chris. He has been a very good teacher. I hope that my daughters and son can learn some of these and soon. It is terrible to go through life dealing with stress in the wrong ways. It really does lead to all kinds of illnesses. I’m not saying that is the only reason I am sick, but it has certainly made things much worse than they could have been.

To be continued…