I am not a painter. At least, not an experienced one. The only paints I own are cheapo watercolors in the impulse-buy art sets I’ve picked up on clearance or at garage sales. Today, on a whim, I decided to try out the paints in my 80-piece Creatology Art Set. (This is just the only link I could find, not an endorsement of this retailer. I paid something like $4 for mine at Michael’s.)

A note on this kit: the markers are nothing special, but I haven’t tried out the crayons, colored pencils, or oil pastels yet. Considering I tend to use one medium at a time, an all-in-one carrying case like this actually isn’t all that convenient for me. The paint tray, for example, is part of the case so you can’t remove them. It was a bit of a pain attempting to balance such a large, bulky item on my overstuffed desk.

I started by laying down a bunch of scrap paper and wrapping my keyboard in magazine pages. I am a slob with food; why should I be any different when I art? And before you ask, yes, my desk is always at least this cluttered. I feel accomplished to have cleared off enough space to paint.

I suppose that watercolors are by nature pretty inexpensive to manufacture, especially since they can’t dry out the way acrylics can and thus have a near-infinite shelf life. I don’t think I’d used watercolors since I was a child, and fully expected to make an utter mess.

I always keep a stash of free/ad postcards around for just this sort of thing. I went through the stack and pulled out a few made from rougher cardstock so the paint wouldn’t bead. I drew a quick pencil sketch on each, then played with color.

Once they dried, I inked them, erased any glaring pencil marks (a little tricky since the eraser also wanted to remove the paint), and got them ready to mail to some folks on my mailing list (and yes, slots are always open). I have no idea how well they’ll mail; there’s a possibility the paint will all flake off and everyone will received mysteriously blank postcards from me. But hey, at least it’s not another bill! :)