The idea of a compact sketching palette has always appealed to me, as has the idea of compact kits of all sorts. I love to have my watercolours or pens or tools organised for safe and portable use.
The newest addition to the palette family is the Folio. This palette is the same credit-card design, but this time 13.5 x 8.5cm closed - about the size of a mobile phone.
I've set up the Demi palette with a great 12-colour set, and the Pocket Palette with my 15 Ultimate Mixing Set colours. This credit-card size palette fits perfectly into a Galen leather EDC wallet if you want a compact carry case for it. I love the Galenleather.com products and will write about more of them another time.
It comes with a mix of the original rectangular pans, the tiny half pans, some larger square pans and two larger mixing pans so the number of possible configurations are huge. The mixing pans are really useful, and you'd probably keep those in it, but you might choose to set with up to 18 of the original pans, or 36 tiny pans, 9 large pans or your own combination based on the colours you use most. Part of the fun of a palette like this is deciding how to set it our for yourself!
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| The folio palette - open. |
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| The Folio Palette, the Demi Palette and the original business-card sized Pocket Palette. |
Happy painting.
I really like this big size. The tiny eighth pans are just a bit too small for my brush and don't hold much. The quarters are better but I do like a few of their square pans for the colors I use more often. The big folio isn't so big you can't hold it in your hand but it is also thin. I can put in plenty of colors plus have some mixing pans in there too. Love those pen cases. I'll have to see if one of my Levenger leather pen cases will work. But I will be ordering a five pen Galen leather case in natural. They use veg-tanned leather which means I can tool it to add a custom design. I have been planning to make my own leather cases for my watercolors for some time but haven't settled on a design. The Galen case is a great interim design.
ReplyDeleteI also felt the smaller size was a too petite. This larger palette size seems much more versatile. I’ve gone ahead and ordered the larger folio and the great recommendation of the Galen case. I am looking forward to using them!
ReplyDeleteI got the Folio palette immediately when it first came out, but I couldn’t decide how to configure it. Finally I realized I have just about 60 tubes of paint so I ordered more mini pans. Now I consider the Folio as my traveling archive of 60 colors.
ReplyDeleteI've been using the folio for a couple months. I recently installed more mixing areas and larger pans per the Brenda Swenson hack. It works very well! Unfortunately, the hack isn't on her blog as she's discontinued it. It was in her newsletter.
ReplyDeleteThere is still a video about it on Youtube.
DeleteIs the new folio size the one that fits in the EDC wallet? Thank you!
ReplyDelete