How to keep a swatch log and why you should keep one.

Do you have a hoard of art supplies and often forget what you’ve got? I confess I do! Resisting temptation to try new mediums and colours is very hard and keeping track of what you have is quite hard. have you ever accidentally purchased a colour you already have? I know I have!

Enter the swatch log!

As you might know by now I love creating swatches of the different art supplies I have, until recently these swatches were all over the place and after purchasing a few items that I already had in the back of my art cupboard I decided I needed a better system for keeping track of my art supplies.

So I’ve started to create a swatch log, which is essentially one sketchbook containing swatches of all the different art supplies I own. I can refer to my swatch log before I make a purchase (just in case!). It’s also a great way of seeing if you are missing any gaps in your colour palettes in different materials.

I also use my swatch log to test layering aspects, transparency and compatibility with other mediums of my mixed media art supplies. It’s also a great place to do some colour mixing exercises – basically turning your swatch log sketchbook into your own personal materials bible which you can continually refer to.

These are my latest purchase, Liquitex Acrylic Gouache (they are lush!). The 2 lines are just testing what a graphite pencil and a colour pencil looks like on top of the paint. Both layered well.

Using the swatch log to do some initial colour mixing tests.

I’m becoming more and more interested in mixed media so testing how different materials is also important information to include in my swatch log.

This spread I laid out like my gouache palette, unfortunately when I made the palette I lost my notes of the names of the colours so I’ve numbered them here in order to keep track of what mixes to make what.

More to come!

I’ve still got my collection of acrylics to add to my swatch log and some new soft pastels, so I will update this post when I’ve finished adding all my supplies.

Thanks for reading x