The paint store guy talked me out of the one thing I came in for
Went to the art supply place on my lunch break, 40 minutes I don't really have, to get one tube of burnt sienna. Mine is a sad flat metal corpse, I've been squeezing it with pliers like a crazy person.
Guy working there spends ten minutes telling me I should try their house brand instead, it's basically the same pigment, half the price. I said no thanks, I know how the real one behaves when I thin it. He says, and I quote, "they're all made in the same factory."
Maybe they are. I still walked out with the expensive one and now I'm annoyed at myself for being the person who pays double for a label, and also annoyed at him for assuming I don't know my own paint. I've been using this color for nine years. I know exactly how it dries and how it looks over a wet sky.
Anyway the sky on the piece on my easel is now the right color and I'm still thinking about it at my desk. Guess that tells you something.
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Don't be too hard on yourself. "Same factory" says almost nothing. Same pigment, different binder, different mill, and suddenly the way it thins and holds a glaze is a different animal. You knew what you were buying because you've used it, that's not gullibility, that's experience. I've paid double more than once for a tube I could have had cheaper, and the cheap one is still sitting in the drawer, dried out and reproachful.
ok but "the cheap one is still sitting in the drawer, dried out and reproachful" is the most accurate thing I've read all week, I have a whole graveyard of tubes like that. and yeah the binder thing kills me, I had a house brand burnt sienna that looked identical wet and then went chalky the second I layered it, just absolutely betrayed me. the mill matters too, you can feel it in how it comes off the brush. anyway you're right, knowing your own pigment is not the same as getting scammed