What Is The Best Watercolor Paint Travel Set?

I Paint at 36,000 Feet With This TSA-Approved Watercolor Set up

The pairing is genius, and at the aforementioned time remarkably simple. Photo: Courtesy of the retailer

I never thought that I needed to paint on an airplane. I never thought that I needed to paint on a bench in Prospect Park, or on a train ride upstate, or anywhere other than my defended uncomfy chair at my kitchen tabular array. Paints are messy, and they crave a carefully configured space, cups of murky water, and rolls of paper towels for blotting brushes, as well as sopping up said murky water when y'all spill it.

Or so I idea. When a friend showed me her Winsor & Newton pocket paint box, I was impressed. When she then showed me her set of water-begetting brush pens, my world inverse. The pairing is genius, and at the same time remarkably simple: Each brush tip is attached to a squeezable plastic tube that you fill with water earlier y'all paint. The tip screws on, and the water doesn't come out unless y'all printing it. You gently squeeze the body of the castor over the palette, which is congenital into this tiny pigment gear up, and use your single, delicate driblet of water to moisten and mix. And that'southward information technology. So you pigment. (I swear past my Bienfang sketchbook, which has bright-white, medium-weight, seventy-pound paper, only any sketchbook with a little texture, and at to the lowest degree fifty-pound newspaper, will work but fine.)

I experienced the truthful versatility of this combo on a recent flight to Chicago: Not just could I slip the paints by the TSA in my backpack (they're dry and solid, and so no issues there), I was able to fill up up the brushes with a petty distill of h2o from the airplane bath sink, and use a couple of airline napkins to dry the brush. And when I'd finished painting an elegant yet life of a chilled plastic bottle of California Cabernet and a resealable handbag of Cheez-Its, I wiped off the castor and the palette with 1 of those napkins, and tucked the whole prepare away. I found information technology to exist an extremely calming mode to spend an otherwise not-calming flight.

If I were the kind of person who carried things around in my shirt pockets, I would comport these there, considering they would fit. But instead, I just go along them in my bag for those special moments when the light hits a breakfast sandwich just right.

[Editor'south note: The exact pens Alex Testere loves are sold out, but these are a very similar model.]

Winsor & Newton Cotman Watercolor Pocket Box

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