I have some exciting news. I sold three paintings this week and dibs have been called on seven more. Instead of calling it a profit though I will have roughly broke even on all of the gouache supplies I’ve bought. I’m definitely still calling it a win.
I’d much rather break even than go into debt over art supplies. One of these days I’ll hopefully make a profit too. Although, with how I love to buy art supplies I can see myself continuously finding new things to try out. For instance, I’ve been looking at trying out Casin paints. If anyone has tried them, I’d love to hear about your experience with it in the comments.
While tempting, I’m resisting the urge to try out cheaper supplies like Arteza. For one, they appear to be student grade and I have no idea what the long term archival properties are. I’m selling most of my art so archival is important to me. Plus, the really heavy ad push on social media and especially on youTube is annoying. Listening to one person after another rave about their free Arteza supplies sounds like an ad and not a genuine review.
Since starting to paint with gouache, I’ve been watching a lot of youTube to pass the time while paint layers dry. I predominantly watch art youTubers. It seems like a big trend is for youTubers to try out cheap art supplies with cheap looking results. It clearly is a gimmick for views, and is more annoying than not. They frequently don’t even put in a solid effort to use the supplies correctly or try to make anything quality which I find really frustrating. I would like to see them actually make something amazing with the wonky supply they’re using. Honestly, as much as I enjoyed watching art youTubers in the past, I think I’m going to have to find something else. Any recommendations for entertaining things to watch on youTube?
My postings became a little slower toward the end of this week. While I still finished a painting a day, I finished two of them late and didn’t post them on Instagram until the next day. I stuck to painting every day though.
After this week, there is only two more blank pages in my sketchbook, which has unfortunately fallen apart. I got a little aggressive while cutting pages out to sell and cut the binding. The remaining pages are now held together with a large rubber band. While waiting on paint to dry, I sewed together a new sketchbook so I can keep going. My original plan was to paint for 30 days, then it was to fill up my sketchbook. Now that I’m here though, I still want to keep painting every day.
I just received a new shipment from Dick Blick of gouache paints to completely fill up my palette. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t need most of the colors, but I really wanted to try out a variety of colors I haven’t tried in oil. 9 of the 20 colors are ones I’ve used before. For the most part, those 9 colors are still my go to colors, but it’s fun to experiment sometimes. See you all next week!