Next time I visit Tokyo (hopefully next year because I can roll it into a work trip) I plan to do a big shop in Sekaido for Holbein paint and natural hair brushes. Last time I hadn’t yet moved into artist grade paint or brushes and didn’t realize how extremely well priced they were.

CfM sort of specialize in hyperlocal palettes with alluring names like “Land’s End” and “California Desert” and “Outer Sunset”. They make some extremely specific convenience colors that work perfectly if you’re painting in San Francisco. Like their Olive Green is perfect for scrubby coastal bushes

It’s an easy preference to have since those paints are so well-known and widely available. At my skill level, I bet it makes little difference which brand I use as long as it’s artist grade. I also have a bunch of Case for Making which is hyperlocal and very big on custom color mixes.

I somewhat accidentally developed a preference for W&N because the first watercolor book I got from the library mentioned it was a good choice. The book was written by an English person. If I had read an American first I might have ended up with a different brand, like Daniel Smith.

I made a mistake, the green is Sap Green (Winsor & Newton) not Hooker’s Green. I keep thinking it’s Hooker’s Green when I don’t even own that color.

I think I could make garden painting work for me during the rainy season to scratch the pleinair itch. California is mild all year and even rainy days usually have at least a little break.

It also occurs to me I could bring my Sakura Koi travel palette at Christmas and let the nieces use it. They’ll almost certainly want to paint if I paint, and I think they are too young to handle artist grade pigments. Not because they are expensive but because some are toxic.

I’ll get to see all these art supplies at Christmas. I told my parents that ut can be my present from them, which sounds funny since I paid for the items, but being on hand to pick up the delivery and bringing the stuff back to the US is kind of a big deal.

The delivery system was incredibly efficient. They delivered the package to my parents’ place in a small Polish village within 2 days of my order. The village doesn’t even have its own post office so you route things from a nearby bigger village which is on a main trunk train line.

They still use złoty, yeah. PLN is the shorthand if you’re looking at the money transaction

Being even half-ass multilingual is a big advantage when you get into niche materials.

It was 30.70 PLN for a number 4 round and 81.10 PLN for a number 9. Not Kolinski sable but still sable. (That’s 8.44 USD and 22.29 USD). So that seems pretty reasonable. I also did get handful of single pigment half-pans and two metal palettes.

That’s very clever! I normally wear safety goggles over glasses which isn’t very comfortable. My closeup hobbies don’t require special eye protection but I love the idea.

Please do.

Right? That’s cad red and cad yellow, an orange mixed out of the two, and the pink is titanium white with a touch of the cadmium red. The red and yellow is Winsor & Newton which are always reliable IME.