I love using this approach to learn about my paints, and practise water and paint control!

I've been filling my sketchbook with swatches - these are handmade metallic paints from Studio Artisjok and Zenso watercolors:

These are swatches from my Windsor and Newton pan set that used to belong to my amazing Gran:

Then I went on to create flowers that I had sketched first:

And then flowers that were not sketched first:

I liked both processes for making flowers, and I think they each did something different - the planned approach made more careful images and I think the analytical part of my brain was more involved, for the freeform process I think it was more fun although the results weren't always as satisfying to me - I think the process was the important bit in that case rather than the result.

And then I had some fun painting other things with this approach: