Art Tip: Make Paint Swatches

I use a wide variety of paint...

...but my two most used brands are Golden Fluid Acrylics...

...and Liquitex Basics.

I don't know about you, but I have been known, on more than one occasion, to buy the same paint color over and over.  I also am somewhat unaware of what I have.  I find myself reaching for blue, but which blue?

Both problems have such an easy solution: make paint swatches.

I went online to Liquitex & Golden's websites and found color charts.  Neither site had a printable color chart that really worked for my needs.  I ended up cropping and enlarging the one from Liquitex and copying and pasting the one from Golden into a Word document.  I filled both out with the colors I had and slipped them into page protectors (the Golden chart is two-sided).

The Liquitex colors are arranged alphabetically...

...while the Golden colors are arranged by, well, color.

Both styles work, but I will admit I like seeing the small differences in the colors right up against each other on my swatch chart, as in the blues above.

All in all, this makes it super easy to pick the exact color I want to work with.  It also makes shopping simple. What do I need vs. what do I have?

Do you create paint swatch sheets?

Thanks for stopping by!