my mom found my first watercolor set in her garage and now I'm having feelings about a dry cake of burnt sienna

She called me yesterday holding this little plastic Prang set, the kind with eight pans and the world's worst brush, and asked if I wanted it or if she should toss it. I said keep it obviously, but then I sat on the phone looking at it and got weirdly emotional about a crusty pan of burnt sienna.

I was like nine. My dad worked nights and I used to sit at the kitchen table after he left and paint until my mom made me go to bed. Not good stuff, just houses and horses and one very bad attempt at our dog. But I remember the exact feeling of dipping the brush and getting that muddy brown no matter what color I thought I was picking, and being genuinely furious about it.

Here's the thing, I've spent eight years learning why that happened. Hard water, dirty brush water, mixing complementary colors without knowing what a complementary was. I could teach a nine year old that in ten minutes now. But that kid at the kitchen table was having more fun than I've had in a month, and I don't totally know what to do with that.

Anyway. It's on my shelf now next to the good stuff. I'm not painting with it, I just like that it's there.

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Sol Reyes·2h

burnt sienna is the color of everything that actually matters, that's why. every skin tone i've ever gotten right started with it. it's not a pretty color, it's a true one.

and the fact that she called instead of just tossing it, that's the whole thing right there. she knew. she held onto it long enough to ask.

i've got a box of my old stuff i can't open most days. some of it's garbage and some of it's the only proof i was ever a kid. keep the set. even if you never open it again, keep it. the muddy brown remembers you.

Elin Holm·1h

Burnt sienna over raw umber for that, yes. Raw umber goes grey on skin, sienna stays warm even when you think you've overdone it.

The bit about the box is the honest part of this thread. Most of us have one.

Dani OkaforOP·31m

raw umber going grey is the thing nobody warns you about and then suddenly you've got a whole face that looks like it's been dead for a week. I did that to so many portraits in college before somebody finally took pity on me. sienna forgives you, umber doesn't.

and yeah, the box. mine's still at my mom's but I'm driving over to get it this weekend, apparently I need to hold it again. do you still have yours or is it one of those things that got lost in a move?

Dani OkaforOP·1h

ok "it's not a pretty color, it's a true one" is going to live in my head rent free now, that's exactly it, that's the whole reason I keep reaching for it when I'm trying to paint actual skin instead of the pinky-peach nonsense I did for years. and the box you can't open most days. yeah. I have a folder of my dad's stuff I haven't touched since the funeral and some days just knowing it's there is enough. keeping the Prang set. it's going on the shelf next to my good brushes, dry and crusty and all.

Tomáš Havel·2h

Burnt sienna is a strange one to get sentimental about and somehow it's always the one. I still have a jar of somebody's grandfather's dry pigment on a shelf, cracked open, never used, mostly there because it survived a move and I did not have the heart. The Prang brush being terrible is the best part of the story, honestly. You made those horses with a brush that fought you every stroke and you kept going anyway. That is the whole thing, right there. Keep the set, throw out nothing.

Dani OkaforOP·2h

Okay the jar of somebody's grandfather's pigment that has survived a move and never been opened is genuinely the best object in this whole thread. Do you know what it is? Like is there a label or is it in the "mystery brown, do not touch" category, because honestly I'd be scared to open it too.

And yes, the Prang brush, it had that plastic ferrule that bent if you looked at it wrong and about four hairs total. Nine year old me thought I was doing something. I think that's the thing that gets me, I had no idea it was a bad brush, I just thought watercolor was hard and I was bad at it, and I kept going anyway because I loved it. Nobody told me it was the brush.