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I have been experiencing watercolour palette envy and want to buy one or two new ones for portability.

But I am in a quandary not only which to buy, but how interchangeable the pans are in each.

Does anyone own or know whether Schmincke are interchangeable with Winsor & Newton. W&N do not sell empty pans and Schmincke is harder to find in the States. I do know that the Daniel Smith and Kremer pans are not interchangeable with W&N and won't fit even with fiddling.

Has anyone used the Bromley (UK only) "Compact" palette, either half or whole pans? Three people on line have this but each reports on their blogs a different view of what pans fit. Here's a link to the "plastic" palette.

http://www.artsupplies.co.uk/item-new-c ... alette.htm

And lastly, a possible substitute for the high end Schmincke is this Manet palette that has mixed reviews, at Fine Arts, but no information on pan size.

http://www.fineartstore.com/Catalog/tab ... 2CUnitCost

Any information or guidance much appreciated.

Hi,

Unknown if they are interchangeable. Personally I use a small portable set W&N student grade and a few tubes of artist quality. My plan was to use up the all of the student grade watercolor and just squeeze the artist watercolor (from tube) into the existing pans and let them dry. I read many do that precisely because they are not able to locate pan replacements (I see catalogs that display them) but not have been able to locate a store that actually carry them.

Others have been more creative and use modified altoid (mint) cases to store their watercolor.

Thanks for sharing your solutions.

I may have solved my own query, and when I am sure of the info, I'll post again.

Best wishes for some good sketchcrawl days ahead.

It took me some time, but I seem to have the answers to my own question:

The Manet can take Schmincke or Winsor & Newton half pans.

The Compact seems to take Daniel Smith's pans, which may be similar to one of those above.

And I am nearly over my "palette" envy as I secured a small Bijou from Sennelier that doesn't take pans but is sweet in the hand, similar to the old W&N Bijou, and has 1/4 pans. I also found an older Schmincke that can handle either half or full pans.

So, now I am off to paint the garden nearly gone green itself as the weather has done in most of the flowers, and confused them with cold nights and mad rain storms.