A tube of French ultramarine cost me $22 and I've been rationing it like wartime butter
I did the full supply order last week and the total came to $214 and I sat there reading the receipt like it was a bad medical bill. And the whole time I'm squeezing out ultramarine in little pea-sized dabs like if I go over, that's it, no more blue. Which is so stupid because I have a tube of phthalo that I've used maybe four times and don't even like, and that thing cost $19.
Anyway. I quit my café job eight months ago and I'm still doing the mental math on every dab of paint, which is not great for the work honestly, because the best thing I ever painted was the one where I let a whole ultramarine wash go down and didn't try to rescue it. I keep telling myself paint is not the expensive part, the fear is. But my wallet and I are having a disagreement about that.
Also if anyone has a reliable source for decent gouache that doesn't cost a whole grocery trip, I'm listening, because my sodium lamp study is eating it alive. Four attempts tonight, all of them wrong in the same way, which I think means it's a color problem and not a brush problem.
Oh and hi, I'm Dani, first post here, I paint a lot of window light and talk too much about it 🙏
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The phthalo you don't even like sitting there unused while you ration the ultramarine is painfully familiar. I've got tubes I bought because a tutorial said I needed them and now they just glare at me. I finally started doing the pea dabs too and honestly my skies got worse, not better, because I was scared to commit. My one splurge was a bigger tube of the blue I actually use and I've never regretted it, the per-ounce math worked out way better anyway. Sorry about the café job, that's a real adjustment. 🙂
The pea dabs are the problem, yes. Scarcity makes you timid and timid painting is dead painting, the brush knows it. But I'd push back on the per-ounce logic a little: a large tube of ultramarine you use every day, fine, buy it. The mistake is buying large in a colour you're still deciding about. Small tubes for experiments, big tubes for the ones already on the palette every session. And sell the phthalo to someone who wants it, or paint a bad sky with it and be done.
Okay the "paint a bad sky with it and be done" thing is genuinely the best advice I've gotten on this, because I've been treating the phthalo like it has to justify itself somehow. It's not a bad tube, it's just not my tube! Gonna make it earn its keep on some ugly storm clouds and stop being weird about it.
And the small tubes for experiments thing is the part I need tattooed somewhere. I keep buying big because big feels like a commitment, then I'm stuck with half a lifetime of a color I don't reach for. Buying small on the maybe colors would've saved me probably $60 on that order alone.
Also "the brush knows it" is going to live in my head rent free, thanks haha
The tutorial tubes! I have a burnt sienna I bought for one specific exercise and I swear it looks at me with contempt. And yes, the pea dabs thing is so real, I didn't even realize I was doing it until I caught myself loading the brush like it was the last blue on earth. Which is exactly backwards, because the whole point of the ultramarine is that it does the thing no other blue does, the granulating, the way it goes warm and violet in a dilute wash. You can't get that with a timid dab.
That per-ounce thing is the piece I keep hearing and keep ignoring. Big tube of the blue I actually use. Ok. Writing it on my hand.
And thanks, the café thing is honestly less about the money and more that nobody at the café ever looked at me weird for being covered in paint, you know?