Watercolor paint, one of the better brands- is 40% off at Ben Franklin's, so I was able to buy two tubes (Burnt Sienna and Sap Green) that I normally would not be able to afford. The cobalt blue, for example, is over $20! The paints I am currently using belonged to the late great grandmother of my oldest children, Virginia Leaf. She was an artist working under Walt Disney and apparently she worked on three of the Seven Dwarves in Snow White. When she passed away, a set of her watercolors somehow made its way to me. They were ancient when I got them, half dried up with most of the caps fused on, but I was still enthralled with the difference between tube watercolors and the cheap dry cakes in a plastic case that were all I've ever used prior to that.

I'm still using her watercolors eighteen years later, and while I am still honored to have them....they're even drier and in worse shape than they were 2 decades ago. The quinacridone colors weren't available back then, so I did buy 3 tubes of fuchsia/purple colors because I just was not able to get that color with what I had no matter how hard I tried. Other than that....they're all still the old set. There was only one green: Pthalo Green, which has an obnoxiously bluish note if you are looking for a quieter green....and while you can mix up your own greens from blue + yellow, it's hard to make them consistent that way from one painting to another. Yellow Ochre was the only thing close to brown, and again, I could have mixed my own....but Burnt Sienna is a standard, necessary color.

So what I am going to do is this: for every sale of work that I make, I'll buy a tube or two of watercolor paints until I have the necessary colors, starting with the ones I'm short on. I can't wait to try these two out! :-)