Daily watercolor practice | new sketchbook | Holbein paints

November 6, 2025

In August I have decided to move and that also meant I will close my creative studio and take it with me to my new flat. For a while now I have been working on reducing the admin work and studio maintenance and focus more on creating. This was then the final - much needed step :)

Once I have mentally detached from the my studio, I finally started to feel motivated again. To ride that momentum, I started a new sketchbook and decided to film most of my practice paintings to get into the habit of content creation.

The sketchbook

I was browsing on Aliexpress for new art supplies and bumped into some really beautiful watercolor sketchbooks. I prefer smaller, square sketchbooks that I can take with me on my travels. Last time I tried to buy one, I ended up making my own of Arches papers because there was nothing really available here in Zürich.

The brand is called POTENTATE (yes, it is really called that :D) and you can find the sketchbooks here:

https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_c3FA9B0b

The paper is 300 gsm 100% cotton, does not peel even if you go over on the wet surface multiple times and it hardly warps. I really like the paper quality!

The sketchbooks also look super nice with the textile covers, which is an added plus!

Holbein watercolors

I bought a bunch of paints from Roman Szmal beforehand because the colors were so beautiful and the price at the time really low but they are not spreading but running wildly and there is no way one can control it.

So I was looking for watercolors that don't spread that far and ended up with Holbein (stupidly I refused to buy art supplies when I was in Japan, saying I have more than enough.. it would have been half-price :( to buy them there..) and I really like the quality and how the paints are moving slowly on the wet surface.

The question was which colors should I buy? I always went with the one warm and one cool version of each main color (yellow, red, blue, green, brown, dark) in the past. But when I watched some online workshops from artists like Reha Sakar or Darya Mitta, I realized they actually have a lot more yellows and blues and no greens at all. So I went with the blue-focused palette and I kept using it ever since.

The colors I bought: cerulean blue, ultramarine light, rose madder, pyrrole red, permanent yellow light, daybreak orange (granulating), jaune brilliant 1, lavender, turquoise blue, burnt sienna, payne's grey, quinacridone gold, shell pink, opera.

PS: the ceramic palette is from MEEDEN and I bought it on Temu but in the meantime you can buy it also on Amazon or in art supply stores as well.