these:



I got a bunch of them for Christmas, and today I used them to sort and put away my watercolour paints — they are now organized at last! Yay!

Whether I'm painting in watercolour, acrylic, or gouache, I seem to go through ultramarine faster than any other colour.

With acrylic, burnt umber and white are also way up there — and in fact I have done paintings using only those three, and hope to try more of that.

Same top colours with gouache, but there, white is far and away what I use most of.

Meanwhile, with all of them, I have tubes of other colours I haven't even opened yet. Go figure.

My 25th watercolour is a subject I've been meaning to do for a while now. It was made using the brushes and paints I won as a prize yesterday. Since there was very little paint provided to work with, I decided to work small [4 by 6]. Since I was working small and knew that my subject would include some fine details, I worked on smooth paper [bristol] instead of my regular cold-pressed watercolour paper. I've read that smooth [hot-pressed] paper co-operates better with small details, so here was my chance to try it out.

Turns out, I don't like the way watercolours handle on bristol all that much, and probably won't be going back to that. However, the paints were fine to work with -- a little went a long way. Which means they contain lots of pigment, which is what you expect in top-line paint like Daniel Smith. I wish I could afford to work with that caliber of paint regularly. And the brushes were wonderful, holding their point phenomenally well.

Bottom line: I don't think this painting turned out wonderful, but it's not terrible, either. It reminds me that I'm still learning.

While I was out tooling around yesterday, I had what I can only call a premonition -- almost like a little voice in me, saying, “If you go to HomeSense today, you will find gouache”. For those of you who don't know, HomeSense is a discount store that seems to deal in off brands, end of runs, and other odd things. Basically, what they stock is whatever they could find that day. You never know when a new item will show up, or another one will disappear. So you can't go there counting on finding anything.

But I decided to heed my inner voice, went there, and lo and behold but what did I find one lone example of?



Mont Marte is a halfway decent brand, so extra score.

Moreover than that [as one of my art profs used to say], I also found this:



Just the day before, I was reading about mixed bristle brushes. Watercolour brushes [and consequently gouache brushes, which are the same] are usually either natural (animal hairs) or synthetic (nylon fibers). Each has its own subtle strengths and weaknesses, and different people prefer different kinds. But I was reading about mixed brushes, where it said they offer a blend of the advantages of both. I thought that sounded interesting, and I was curious enough to want to try them out and see what I thought. But I didn't recall seeing them anywhere.

Until now. Yet another bonus score!