It's been a while since I blogged.  A long while.  Photography has gone by the wayside for me as my creative outlet has changed.  Last year we moved from a 160 acre farm in the country to a subdivision in town.  My son is older and busy and no longer a willing participant, even when I try to bribe him.  And then, one of my most favorite subjects passed away.  Keena was our Great Pyrenees mix and a subject in many of my most successful images.  Her photos have been printed in magazines, won awards, and graced the National Geographic Your Shot homepage for a while.  She was diagnosed with bone cancer and passed away four months later at the age of 4.  I was heartbroken and still am. 

Luckily, I found a new creative outlet with bullet journaling, which morphed into watercolors.  This has also led to paint collecting (hoarding).  Apparently I'm on a mission to own all the colors and to try all the different paint makers, and there are a lot of them.  I love the paints.  I think I like to collect them as much as I like using them.  They're so tiny and delicate and my collection is precious to me.  And while I'm still learning a lot about painting, I feel like I've learned some expensive lessons about paint collecting.  So I thought, why not share what I have learned?  Maybe it will help another newbie like me on their paint collecting journey.

To start, I'd like to compare a specific color from different paint makers.  Apparently I am really drawn to certain colors because I keep buying them over and over again, thinking that they are unique to my collection, but then when I get them home and swatch them out I discover that it's actually a color that I already have.  It's just named something different.  Most handmade paint makers use different names for their paints than the standard color name, such as raw umber, which is what I'm looking at today.  

My collection has grown so much but I have come to know each and every one of these colors.  I know who the paint maker is, the names of them, and where they are located on my ever growing palette by heart. 

1. "Raw Umber" by Poems About You - I really appreciate the fact that this paint maker's colors are named just what they are.  Plus Lena offers free shipping, so I always feel like if I need to go back and order another color it doesn't cost me an arm and a leg.  The only way that this isn't cost effective is if I would need to buy several colors at once, because I'm sure that the cost of shipping is built in to the price so you actually end up paying a little more per color, which in total is costlier if you were placing a larger order.  Another plus is that she seems to have most all of her colors in stock all the time, which can be difficult to find with some of the handmade paint makers.

2. "Teak" by Artistic Isle - I love, love this paint maker's paints.  If I'm looking for something truly unique I'm most likely going to find it in Lindsey's store.  She is very knowledgeable and generous in her paint sales and her packages almost always have a little something extra in them when they arrive.  It's like opening a present every time and the paints never disappoint, unless I discover that it's a color that I already have.  Her paints are irresistible to me and I find myself buying new colors just because they are new and I don't have them. 

3. "Troll" by Alchemy Souls Art - I also really love Liza's Dark Bee Watercolor line.  The colors are soft and ethereal.  They all seem to go well together.  I bought a set for painting florals and then continued to add a couple of colors here and there.  It's nice to build on to a collection from a specific paint maker when I know that whatever color I choose will go well with my other colors.

4. "Antique Paper Ochre" by Earth Mineral Arts - I had been dying to try Margot's paints for a while and finally received a set for my birthday.  They're still new to me so I haven't had a chance to really try them all out and so far I've only done one painting with them, but I can tell they are great quality and the sample sizes that I got are quite generous.  For someone who works full time and has limited time for painting these should last me a long time.  Antique Paper Ochre is reminiscent of Raw Umber but appears to be a little darker than the others.  Still, a beautiful color that I'm happy to have.

5. Just for fun, I threw in a commercially produced paint.  "Umber" by White Nights from Russia is a surprisingly good paint for the price.  I haven't had my White Nights set for too long, but so far I find them to be a great value and I wish I had started out with this set.  You can get a full pan for about $1.88 from Jackson's Art Supplies.  What a deal!  

So what I have learned in all of this is that I should really just stop buying paint and try to use up what I have because God knows, I probably already have it.  It's so difficult to tell by shopping online what the colors actually look like and I don't feel like I know until I have them in hand and swatch them all out.  Each maker presents them differently.  They take photos in different light and have their own styles for swatching.  My disclaimer in all of this is that I am by no means an expert.  I don't know a whole lot about pigment information and I know very little about the process of making watercolors.  I just know that I love them and when I paint with them I can tell that someone's heart and soul has gone into making them.  They are art in and of themselves and I treasure all of them.  The experience of painting with handmade watercolors is just...special.  I think if you were looking to save money on your art supplies, buying handmade is probably not the way to go.  I do have commercially produced paints as well and I enjoy them, too, but they are not sending me lovely handwritten notes or extra samples when I place an order.  There's just a level of individuality in the handmade paints that isn't there with the commercial ones.  There are definite pros and cons of each and I will probably continue to use both, but if I were looking to keep from getting duplicate colors I would probably try to find one or two paint makers and stick with them.  The biggest problem with that is availability and range of colors, which can be problematic when dealing with handmade.  Never mind the temptation of that new color coming out!  If you have any additional thoughts please leave them in the comment section below.  I would love to hear everyone's opinions.