Kuretake paints

I bought a completely unnecessary set of 36 Kuretake watercolour paints - but gee they’re nice. They can be used as normal watercolour with lots of water but are thick enough to have almost a gouache effect if you don’t use much water. And the gold is LOVELY. I was having a tiresome day at work and weakened for online shopping. This is absolutely my weakness - distraction at work! When I retire I will be much richer. 

Part of the charm is the box, talk about marketing genius, they suggest the first thing you should do is fill in the colour chart on the inside of the box. Brilliant - because obviously all you want to do is try out ALL the colours - and they make it sound like you are doing a sensible and useful thing! And give you a series of little boxes to colour in! Honestly painting in those 36 boxes was one of the happiest half hours I had this week. 

I also got a watercolour brush that has the water in the handle. I thought I was buying one but it turned out it was three of different sizes, and that’s fine too. The instructions are in Japanese but I figured it out. I thought that it would be like a normal brush, just not dipping it into the water, but it’s not, it’s quite different. You use the paint dark at first then brush it out with the wet brush. I think it will be very useful but might take some time to get used to. 

I thought it would be good for roses (dark in the middle, lighter at the outside) so practised with a sheet of flowers. 

And then, when I was downstairs, the avocado-shaped assassin jumped up on my desk and flicked out half a dozen watercolour pans, one by one, off the desk and onto the carpet. Why???? Vengeance????? Now I have to leave the lid on the box. Monster.