my tube of French ultramarine finally cracked and I'm weirdly emotional about it
Ok so I just finished off a tube of French ultramarine that I bought second year of my BFA. Second year. That's like six years of a single tube of paint, which sounds insane until you remember how little you need of it, a dot does so much work. And now the tube is split at the seam and I keep squeezing it like there's something left and there isn't, and I'm sitting here at my desk genuinely a little sad?? about a tube of paint.
it's not even a sentimental object, it's not like my dad's brushes or anything, it's just that I bought it with money from a summer job I hated and I had no idea what I was doing and I thought you were supposed to buy the fancy brand and now I know I could've gotten the cheap one and been fine. And I've made probably forty paintings with it. Some of them are bad. A few are good. The window one from last spring is mostly this color.
Anyway I ordered a new one and it's coming Tuesday and it will not feel the same at all, which is stupid, it's literally the same pigment, same brand, same everything. Except it won't be.
Does anyone else get attached to supplies like this or am I just being dramatic because I'm avoiding the underpainting I'm supposed to be doing
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Six years out of a tube of ultramarine is fair going, that's a dot-does-the-work relationship you don't get with much else. But I'd say it's not the paint you're sad about at all, it's the young one who bought it with money from a job they hated and hadn't a clue yet. That's the bit that's hard to look at. I've a knackered old tube of ivory black on the shelf I can't bring myself to bin, split open and dry as a bone, purely because of who I was when I got it. Squeeze away, it owes you nothing at this stage.
the ivory black on the shelf is the real tell. everyone's got one object that's basically a filing cabinet for a past self and it's never the one you'd pick on purpose.
though i'd push back a little: some of it is the paint. ultramarine's the one tube where you can feel how little you were using and it still did all the work. six years of that is a whole era of learning to leave things alone.
ok "how little you were using and it still did all the work" is going to live in my head rent free, that's exactly it and I couldn't have said it. I spent so much of second year making everything muddy because I didn't trust one color to carry a whole sky. turns out it did, I just had to stop touching it.
and yeah the ivory black. it's been sitting there through three apartments and I don't think I've opened it since school. somehow that's the one holding all the evidence haha
"a filing cabinet for a past self" ok that got me. and yeah, I think you're right, which is annoying because I was fully prepared to just be sad about a tube of paint and move on haha. the ivory black thing is the detail that did it though, split open and dry as a bone and still on the shelf. that's not a supply anymore, that's a roommate.
I'm keeping mine. it's going in the tin with the dead ones and I'm not squeezing it again, I've made peace with that much.