30 Paintings - Day 4

Well, I have gone completely off script ( or goal, whichever works for you). Today's painting is a watercolour, not acrylic or abstract and, it will probably go straight in the round file!

While shopping the other day, I went through one of those 'cattle-chutes' that so many stores have put in to guide you to the cash registers - mostly to make you wait where you have to look at products. I usually don't have a problem with impulse buys but this time I couldn't resist. I bought a box of 18 watercolour paints for $7.99. I know, I know, I know better but I was so busy laughing I just had to try them. Here is what the box claims are the 'features': good lightfastness, excellent transparency and tinting strength, superb working properties and, finally, suitable for all artists.

You can see from the above exercise that the colours are by no means transparent. There are very few colours that mix well to make a good third colour and often, when you do mix, you end up with muddy colours. I can't say much about the working properties as I wasn't using my regular paper but they didn't seem to be too bad. One good point - there is a silver paint that actually sparkles and it might be useful some day. If nothing else, I will be able to use these paints to show students what NOT to buy.

I have seen so many super paintings in the last few days at  Leslie's Blog 
that I feel like the 30/30 challenge has been going on for longer than four days. I hope you will take time to have a look.