…about my aqua gouache paint.
Very early in the pandemic I asked Nikki if I could use a set of paints I had bought her the year before for her birthday. They were Gouache paints and they came in a set and I had enjoyed the varying opacities/effects she had gotten out of them and thought they might be fun to play with.
They were very dried out but I looked up on YouTube the best way to “revive” them and had some fun playing with them as I added water/mixed them. Once I had them functioning, I broke out the set regularly for my “creative meditation” rituals which I came to rely on during that stressful time.
For some reason, I remembered that set being expensive. Like…I thought the set was like $80 or something. So for the last two years I’ve been treating it like it as that expensive, never fully letting myself embrace my favorite colors…constantly diluting them with colors I don’t love so I could make the set last longer.
But this morning I wanted to use my favorites, dammit! And only mix with white! Not oranges or browns!
So I did, but I still used the neighboring page for a “junk” painting so I didn’t waste what I had already put on my palette.
And then I got to thinking…That was fun, how much is this set anyway? I mean, I had been using it for TWO SOLID YEARS, if I had to spend $80 replacing it…would it be that big of a deal?
Why was I acting like it was so expensive? I spent more than that on pens every year and I never use those to empty…I basically buy pens when I’m sad! Why am I acting like buying a new paint set should only happen if I conserved and used EVERY PAINT COLOR EQUALLY?
I mean…look at how much I still have left!
And they’re all used pretty evenly! Obviously one of the whites is empty (I do have a tube of white backup) – but the rest are pretty evenly used and MORE THAN HALF FULL IN MOST CASES!
And this is after painting one page in the morning a few times a week for TWO YEARS? WTF, Kim? CHILL OUT!
So I’m going to spend the next few weeks just painting using whatever colors I want, dammit!
Paint that shit!
I have been catching up on posts and when I noticed the paints I thought “I wish I could remember what she called those!”
Now I know.
For me it was growing up with an older father and in the Catholic Church—I was taught “waste” was a sin and in the past I too would have not been comfortable being all willy nilly about using something like that for fun.
Now I ascribe to the teachings of Abraham Hicks—-it feels good to feel good.
Paint away my friend!!!
Julie
ps
you have also encouraged me to just doodle with water colors and add inspirational quotes to them—then throw them in a dollar store frame and give them away as gifts!!!