Addicted to art supplies?

Similar to other tools, art supplies sometimes get blamed for poor paintings. It is like the poor home carpenter who always blames his tools because the shelf fell down or the faulty drill for the crooked switch.

 

You can also find some watercolorists who blame their supplies for less than stellar paintings: the paper buckled, the paint was too runny, if I only had artist' quality supplies. It's easy to believe that good paintings require good supplies. 

 

The reality is that having more art supplies may actually complicate things for the beginner and most. It's better to have fewer supplies and learn how to use them inside out. For example, how can you paint a tree with a large flat brush? There are lots of options here as each brush can produce a number of different brushmarks. How many different greens can one created with a basic yellow, blue and red?

 

However, having said that ordering art supplies on-line is such a guilty pleasure! At our fingertips we can surf the web and see the myriad of colours and brushes that exist. It’s easy to believe that additional colours provide greater opportunities.

 

Regardless of what we know about mixing our own colours and the number of paint brushes we own, online shopping addiction afflicts many of us, even if we know better.

 

So how do we know if we have issues with online shopping?

• Do you always have a tab open in your web browser with stuff in a shopping cart waiting for you to click purchase?
• Does your daily routines include browsing online retailers to see what’s new or on sale?
• Does your inbox contains countless newsletters about sales, more than real emails?
• Have you accidently purchased the same products twice?

Nevertheless, ordering on-line has to be the best thing that ever happened to art supply shops ;-) 

 

For today, here is a painting of a photo of a peony taken from my garden. This peony is called "Charm" and in the morning and night forms these lovely balls. During the day they open to show more beauty. I painted this for my office using only 2 round brushes and only 5 colours.

Danielle