Testing various watercolour paints and pens

In my previous post, I mentioned that I keep what I call a studio book - I keep swatches of art mediums, as well as notes about art tips/experiments for future reference. These are some of my watercolour supplies : 

And the swatch samples don't have to be fancy to be useful...it's really great when you're wondering what the colour is really like : 

The Koh-i-noor samples come in the circular containers above. These are my caran d'ache crayons and 2 kinds of watercolour pencils.

I've also fairly recently acquired Tombows. 

I had some questions about how I might use them. Of course the best way is to test them out for yourself. It's so great to have a studio book where you can do this kind of thing. Click on any photo to see it larger.

I used them on different surfaces, and tried out a blending pen as well as water. They handle quite differently on the papers that I use compared to aqua markers : 

I think the water is fine for blending the tombows, but the blending pen might be fun for lettering : try out some fun lettering techniques with Tombows HERE and HERE. 

If you like lettering you might also like to explore my recent post which includes free online lettering class information HERE.
And I did a couple of other searches and found that I should have been blending on a separate page - how to blend with the tombow palette. I think I might just try freezer or baking paper since it should sit on the surface. There's another similar technique here. 
You can also use your studio notebook to decide whether you actually need to acquire another new product. I was considering absorbant ground for using watercolours on different surfaces. However : 

Now I've decided for the papers I currently use as substrates I'm good as I am.
I hope if you don't have some kind of studio book you're inspired to start one.