I’m all excited and
gooey, ooh!
Fresh new paints!
There’s
over £100 worth of them here, can you believe it? But it was time I treated myself and I've been motivated by a particularly inspiring commission which is currently re-energising me too, at last. I may write more about that later. In the meantime, just look at these most delightful little
half pans in their individual wrappers, they remind me of lovely old-fashioned sweets (I'm thinking fragrantly fruity chewy ones, or perhaps those hard ones with the sugary shards that almost slice through your tongue.)
They’re so perfect I
don’t want to open them but at the same time, oh I crave, I need, their contents. Each one a different, exotic flavour. I mean colour. Whilst part of me wants to resist even touching them, I will gently pull away the wraparound paper
label, then the cellophane, to reveal the glorious pigment itself, so neat in
its little half pan box. Pristine, its
surface so smooth, it looks good enough to lick! The cute miniature container with the name of
the hue in the teeniest tiniest print (about 1mm high?) on the side is like a tiny
dolls’ house cake tin. A tiny dolls’
house cake tin with a psychedelic loaf in it. Delicious. I think I’m a watercolour half pan fetishist.
So I love them: all shiny, new and unused, ready to be
ritually unwrapped and lusted after, and then… well, things get wild. It gets messy, uncontrolled,
spontaneous. I misbehave and mistreat
them. My beautiful box set ends up looking like this.
Granted, this selection is at least ten years old. These paints really do last.
Anyway, that’s my thing. A fresh new paintbox. What’s yours? The perhaps
unlikely, innocent thing that gives you a special hard-to-explain little thrill
when you see it first in its pristine condition? A new book perhaps, oh the
smell of the paper, the stiff cover yet to be folded, the spine yet to be
bent? Or a big bar of chocolate, tempting you with
the sparkle of its smooth metallic foil wrap, almost too mesmerising to open? Perhaps a toolbox? Or a pack of vacuum cleaner bags? (Getting silly now.) Of course, records always did it for me too,
big time. The shiny vinyl and immaculate
grooves, the unchartered B-side of a new single, when every purchase promised a
voyage of discovery. CDs don’t quite
have it, although almost - I can still get that flutter when first exploring a fold-out
inner. And notebooks still do it for me –
notebooks and sketchbooks, their blank pages exciting and daunting in equal
measure. Long may we enjoy such nuances!
Of course, there's only one song that I really should post now, and brilliant to see with a promo film too.
Pink Floyd: Paintbox
PS - Apologies for quietness around these parts lately too, just one of those things!
What a treat to see your paintboxes - old and new - C! This post, coincidentally, coincides with the recent recurrence of my own obsession with watercolour painting and the refurbishment of my palettes with fresh colours.
ReplyDeleteIf I can figure out how to photograph mine, I'll send a pic to you along with the colour chart I always make to fit inside the palette lid.
I quite love the appearance of your older box, evidence of years of creativity and inspiration with those oodles of mysterious pigments. Please post the colour chart if you have one.
So glad that you've been offered a new commission which has energized you so much.
Hi VS, and good to see you again. Great that you're currently obsessing over your watercolours too. I've spent the whole Summer painting very bright work in acrylics, which suited the job in hand, but were not so much to my own taste, so a bit of a conflict there. Now, out of the blue, a new book for which I feel the loose and more transparent watercolour effect will be most suited. So I'm tucking in!
DeleteThe old box - which I'll still need to use for some of the additional colours I've added along the way - seems to me like a work of art in itself. Just like the layers and layers of splashes and spillages on the surface beneath... !
Enjoy your painting and your fresh colours too.
C,
DeleteI have a question about your original palette. Was the bottom half originally the mixing surface? Once you filled that area with additional pans, what mixing surface did you end up using to mix your colours on instead? (Sorry, but I'm fascinated!)
Hi - yes I realise it must look odd to be so full of pans that the box can't be closed! It was just a cheap set originally, that's the lid, and I've ended up using it for all the new individual paints I've accumulated over the years to keep everything together. I mix up my paints elsewhere - I re-use old margarine tubs, plastic food trays, container lids etc., anything suitable once it's been washed out - what you might call upcycling! (They're great for acrylics too as you can put the original ids on them and keep them live for a while.)
DeleteI think I'm too messy to keep a nice palette ;-)
Thanks for responding, C. I love your old palette and, strange as it might sound, it's what I aspire to with mine. I want to break away from my tendency to crave order and the pristine - it can be very limiting and make one rather timid about bursting out impetuously on the paper.
DeleteI've registered for a Fall watercolour course and, in addition to the colours I already had and have recently purchased, a couple of my watercolourist friends have also donated more colours than I know what to do with. I now have 66 in my palette and think I'll be too embarrassed to take that one to class. Instead, I'll opt for a small, folding travel palette that holds about 18.
Would you mind me asking which are your go-to "primary" mixing colours? (If you're too busy to answer, just ignore me.) ;-)
No problem, Marie, just been having a more restful afternoon so timing fine! Hope you enjoy your watercolour course, I'm sure you will. It can be hard to loosen up when painting, but with watercolour being such a loose medium, I think it lends itself well to a bit of spontaneity and experimentation, so cast aside any concerns and let your hair down! :-)
DeleteI must be honest, I'm purely instinctive when it comes to mixing colours and depending on the job/subject in hand (in spite of art college background I've never been taught how to actually paint, I'm probably doing it all wrong!) so all trial and error really... Colours I wouldn't be without,though, are Cerulean Blue, Raw Sienna, Burnt Umber and Sap Green - and I love (but only recently discovered) the perfectly titled 'Neutral'. I'm thinking it may be a very individual thing, I don't know?
Just what I needed to hear, I think.
DeleteIt's probably more beneficial to respond instinctively to the whole process of watercolour painting, rather than to cling to a lot of arbitrary (and often contradictory) "rules."
Thanks for your help, C. I'll try to take your advice and loosen up.
Sounds good, Marie, I'm sure it will yield excellent results! I have difficulty with "rules"!
DeleteFor loosening up, I can also recommend drawing (if just from the imagination) with your eyes closed. Honestly!
Oooh . . . now that sounds really intriguing and not scary at all! I'm going to give it a go. Thanks again, C!
DeletePaint porn?!
ReplyDeleteDefinitely! And don't even get me started on pencils.
DeleteYou beat me to it Martin. It was all getting a bit steamy there!
DeleteCracking open and grinding a fresh bag of coffee beans does it for me these days, although I always used to amuse friends by my habit of smelling newly purchased LP sleeves! I still love buying them, but haven't taken the nose of one for a long time - I guess I just got out of the habit when CDs came along. Perhaps I'll pull an LP off the shelf and give it a sniff to see if it still works for me.....
We take our pleasures however we can! The smell of coffee beans and vinyl? - must be some scope there for a new perfume line!
DeleteThey do look just too good to open don’t they but I’m sure great things will come from them.
ReplyDeleteWe discussed this before around here but I’m sure your Man Hunt lipstick looked beautifully pristine before its first application! A brand new make-up set looks perfect but all too soon there are smudges and rounded edges. As for the lipstick tester rack in Boots et al, they can get really messy - shame.
Also biscuits - A new pack in a new tin, pristine. But then the pack is opened and there are crumbs and broken ones and ripped wrapping and....
But we are supposed to use things, and in your case create beautiful new things, so the very nature of it all. Enjoy your new set of paints.
Ah yes, new lipstick, that's a good one! So perfectly sculpted to start with and then they end up so stubby and sometimes even slightly concave (I'm not sure how that happens?!)
DeleteWith biscuits, it's the individually wrapped type that thrill me more than any other, e.g. a lovely new packet of orange Clubs. I think it's the paper labels, actually not that different to the watercolour paints I've just bought! Maybe there's a correlation...
But yes, all meant to be used and enjoyed for what they are (I will try to resist eating my paints!)
It really is beautiful. Once the first smudge appears, though, all bets are off. Then it needs to be dirtied up. There is something about your well used paintbox that's more interesting. Lots of stories to be told there.
ReplyDeleteSo true... and it's that thing, isn't it: sometimes, in order to create, you must destroy.
DeleteI also love the aesthetics of delapidation, it has an appeal all of its own.
I would often stare at new shrink-wrapped TDK C90 cassettes; for hours, seemingly, before breaking the seal with my thumbnail and embarking on the latest compilation tape adventure.
ReplyDeleteAh, you've taken me right back. Yes, I totally get that. The whole thing of putting together a tape comp, the fold-out inlay with its tiny space to write on, the little label on the cassette itself waiting for a creative title, and then tucking it all up in the case. Simple pleasures!
DeleteEnjoy your new paintbox! As a life-long movie fan, I used to read film magazines and TV-guides (in print) and got a kick out of receiving those in the mail. Now I read online but I still sometimes get a thrill when sites update
ReplyDeleteThanks Chris. I know what you mean about receiving your favourite interest mags in the post too. There were a couple I remember subscribing to which had that effect on me, one as a very young child and one as a twenty-something, and when they came through the letterbox it was as if they had been created especially for me. Somehow it imbued with more than if I had just picked a copy up from a pile at a newsagents.
DeleteOh God, where to start? New paperbacks, the smell of the pages. Vinyl obvs especially when you get that slight crackle of static when you take a new album out of the inner sleeve for the first time. Magazines especially with heavy, quality pages. I get the thing about paint tubes too.
ReplyDeleteThese things properly feed the senses, don't they... the smell of pages, the static, the feel of thick paper... I know that's why I don't want to live too much of my life on-line!
DeleteI understand fetishising objects like this, as a lifelong collector... albeit one who's had to downsize or digitize most of his collections in recent years.
ReplyDeleteThose paints do look special, but I like the used ones too.
As to what does it for me these days... best I can come up with is opening a new bag of coffee. Snipping the bag and breathing in that first whiff...
Interesting that the smell thing is so prevalent here. I used to think it was one of those less important senses but it can do so much more than just serve a functional purpose - the power to evoke.
DeleteAnd for some reason I feel a very strong urge to go make myself a coffee now...:-)
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ReplyDeleteRemoved, but shifted up to where it belongs under the original comment and your reply, C.
Delete