found some old dry artist's pigments at the thrift store, so I thought I'd try making a travel watercolor set for myself. I made my own paint once before in high school, when we made old school egg tempera with real egg yolks, but this was my first time working with gum arabic as a raw ingredient. (it's kinda yucky.) i premixed eight 'desert palette' powders and combined them with the watercolor base medium of water/gum/honey, then poured them into a recycled crayola paint tray and let them dry into cakes.

I learned that not all pigments are created equal. the colors made from literal dirt like sienna and umber dissolve almost instantly, while rose madder takes forever to stop being gritty. cerulean blue dominates whatever it's mixed with once water is added. hansa yellow tends to float on top. this made mixing the three greens Interesting.

I used these paints to do a landscape painting out in the desert and I think it turned out pretty rad