I spent the majority of February sick and then dealing with shingles, which means I’ve had a lot of down time. Time where I couldn’t do much other than hope things would pass quickly while I entertained myself.

I took advantage of the time to finally start playing with some of the art supplies I got for Christmas. I’m not an artist by any means but artistic endeavors like coloring and painting sooth me and are fun, stress-free hobbies.

I’ve enjoyed getting to know my little water color set I got for Christmas in my art and coloring book haul. I’m a watercolor newbie and haven’t used the medium since I had a Crayola palette of basic colors way back in the day. This has definitely been a step up from that.

Here is my video review of one of the first times using it. I’m by no means a watercolor expert but I love using this set!

Sakura XNCW-24N, 24 Assorted Watercolors Field Sketch Set with Brush

It’s a cute little case with lots of potential color mixing which is so fun! That’s something I’m still working on learning but I love how the colors mix and bleed together. The pigments are super high quality and create some very rich, vibrant watercolor paintings.

Here are the details of what it comes with:

• Half pan watercolors that blend easily
• A refillable koi water brush to transport and store water
• Small, sleek design perfect for painting on-the-go
• Lightweight and affordable
• Portable field sketch kit
• Includes brush, sponge, built-in palette, 24 mini watercolor cakes, plastic case

Here are the colors:

• Chinese White
• Lemon Yellow
• Aureoline Hue
• Permanent Yellow Deep
• Permanent Orange
• Jaune Brilliant
• Vermillion Hue
• Cadmium Red Hue
• Crimson Lake
• Quinacridone Rose
• Purple
• Cobalt Blue Hue
• Cerulean Blue
• Ultramarine
• Prussian Blue
• Yellow Green
• Viridian Hue
• Permanent Green Deep
• Olive Green
• Yellow Ochre
• Light Red
• Burnt Umber
• Payne’s Grey
• Ivory Black

I’ve been working a lot on hand lettering and have a queue of YouTube videos lined up to help me get better. It’s not something that is coming as naturally as I thought it might so more practice and some instruction will help.

Tonight I played around with using watercolors on a coloring book page. It worked well and with some better control of saturation, water amount, etc. It was interesting experiment on non-watercolor paper to see how it worked. I think it could create some really pretty coloring book pages.

Clearly more practice is needed here too. Luckily this type of practice is something I find calming and fun.

My doctors (yep, I got to see several last month!) told me stress was a big part of the shingles outbreak I had. Stress from being sick, from a new job, from having a lot on my plate, all converged at once to trigger the shingles. In addition to fantastic medicines, it was recommended  that I focus on ways to de-stress.

So the more calming activities and ways to relieve stress, the better. Bring on the coloring! Bring on the watercolors!