I went to the arts and crafts store in Trier yesterday. The shopping list consisted of two items – a 12 pan set of White Nights paints if they had them and an inch brush of some description that could handle water and water colour but which did not require a mortgage to pay for.
Broadly, this is what I came back. It was a bit more than I expected to be buying but there is an inch brush in there, and the White Nights.
One of my friends asked me during the week how many paints I had. He asked about pens too. I think he was brave.
I’m not short of paints so you might wonder why I eventually capitulated when here in Luxembourg I have with me:
- 48 pan Sennelier Artists Colours
- 24 pan Winsor & Newton Artists colours
- 24 pan Schmincke Akademie Student colours
- 12 pan Van Gogh Student colours
- some Schmincke Horadam Artists colours in a box put together by me
- a 12 pan Gansai Tambi set
- A 6 pan Kuretake Starry colours set
- 2x Winsor & Newton travel boxes containing a mix of Cotman Student grade colours and WN Artist grade colours.
In the grand scheme of things, I don’t “need” paints as such. But I was intrigued by the White Nights paints. They provoke a certain amount of polarisation. There are arguments over how light fast they are, and there are people who love them, and people who really don’t think they are all that. I’ve found that I like a lot of stuff on instagram which comes from Russian artists and I wondered if by any chance Russian manufactured paints behave any differently to my western European and to a lesser extent, Japanese paints. The White Nights are not that expensive – depending on where you buy them, that is. I paid about 24E for mine and they are apparently Artist grade paints so that would put them in the zone of least expensive Artist grade paints
I’ve painted up a reference sheet and looking at it here beside me, I can say I like the neutral black which is opaque, the umber and light carmine too. The Emerald is very Viridian like, the Green is quite dark to black and opaque so that will need watering down in the future. All in all the set of colours looks to be reasonably useful. We will see how I get on when I start trying to paint roses with them.
There was nothing too exciting in the rest of the pile – some Pigma Micron brush pens as I tried them out in store and they seem fun. More for brush lettering than painting or colouring. I also added to the collection of Uni Signo pens – found a midnight blue which I did not know existed (but they even do refills for this – yay). I am now so well kitted out for Uni Signo it will take a while before I need any more. There were some water colour canvases which I hadn’t seen before but knew existed. I will probably put a van on one of them. We will see. I added another square block of watercolour paper and now I really need to figure out how best to store that as I have about 4 blocks on the go at any given time (different paper size, surface, blah really, 1st world problems.
The one other thing of note is I found a Zentangle set with a couple of white Gelly roll pens in it – these I cannot find individually at all and they are well spoken off for highlighting so, not being that expensive, I picked up that set and added to the collection of white pens.
So at the moment I cannot think of a single thing that I need other than to actually spend time doing art, painting and drawing. No more shopping in other words. Oh and stop hoarding paper – I have more than enough of it now.