Recipe Illustration 02 | Watercolor Warm-Up: How to Create a Swatch Sheet and Mixing Chart

Before jumping into a full painting, I always like to start with a quick watercolor warm-up—and in this lesson, we’re making a swatch sheet and a color mixing chart. This simple painting exercise gives you a better understanding of how your watercolors behave, how they mix, and what they actually look like on paper (which can be surprisingly different than they appear in the palette!).

Why Make a Watercolor Swatch Sheet?

One of my favorite tools is a little cheat sheet I keep tucked inside the lid of my watercolor palette. I find that when I can see each color on paper, it’s so much easier to make confident choices while painting. Some colors—especially blues—can look nearly identical in the pan, but once swatched, their differences become much more clear.

By swatching your paints in the same order they appear in your palette, you’ll not only create a helpful reference but also get a feel for each pigment’s intensity, how much water it needs, and which ones are a little trickier to work with.

What You’ll Need

• Your watercolor palette (I’m using the Winsor & Newton Cotman Sketchers Box)
• A watercolor brush
• Water cup and paper towel
• Watercolor paper for your swatches
  
  

How to Create Your Swatch Sheet

1. Start by getting your brush fully wet—swirl it around at the bottom of your water cup, and then gently tap off the excess so it’s not dripping.
2. Pick up your first color and apply a swatch to your paper. I like to make the swatch roughly the same size as the pan in the palette for quick reference.
3. Be sure to rinse your brush completely between each color to avoid muddying your swatches.
4. Continue moving through your palette, swatching each color in the exact order they appear. This will make your reference sheet much easier to use later on.
   
   

A Note About the Paints

The Winsor & Newton palette I’m using has a well-balanced color selection—two yellows, two reds, two blues, two greens, and a few browns. 

This limited yet versatile range is ideal for beginners. With fewer colors, it’s easier to stay in control and avoid making muddy mixes.

As you swatch, you’ll notice some interesting differences—like how the same amount of water can result in wildly different intensities depending on the pigment. For example, one of the blues in this set is incredibly rich and saturated, while the yellow is much lighter, even with the same brush load of paint and water.

Mixing Without Black

This palette doesn’t include a black, and honestly, I prefer it that way. Instead of using black, I’ll show you how to mix a beautiful neutral gray in the next video. 

This trick adds more depth and life to your shadows and keeps your colors feeling fresh rather than flat.

Next Steps: Mixing Colors

Once your swatches are dry, you’ll have a visual map of your palette that you can refer back to again and again. It’s one of the best quick exercises you can try as a beginner watercolor artist—especially if you’re just getting started.

Hop on over for the next lesson, where we’ll dive into mixing colors and creating your own customized palette for recipe illustrations and beyond!

Happy painting,
Katie