Yesterday, on the way home, I felt the urge to hop into a shop to buy a white acrylic marker.
My reasoning was airtight, obviously. I needed it to sign my future pieces — the ones that might be too dark for a regular black ink pen. I’d seen an artist in an online video do exactly this: her painting was dark, so she signed it with a white marker. Elegant solution. Clearly I needed to be prepared for that moment.
I was already excited. That particular buzz of anticipating a new purchase, the feeling that you’re about to solve a problem and gain a tool at the same time. The shop was just a short detour.
And then, somewhere in the slow-moving traffic, with music playing and nothing urgent to do, I started actually thinking it through.
I haven’t yet made a dark painting. Not one. I was about to spend money on a solution to a problem I don’t have, for a situation that may never happen, inspired by something I watched someone else do. I was, in other words, buying supplies for an imaginary version of myself — one who paints dark, moody pieces and needs a white marker to sign them.
The marker stayed in the shop. And I came home and wrote this instead.
This is my note to myself — and maybe to you too, if any of this sounds familiar.
The Supplies We Buy for Our Imaginary Artist Selves
There is a particular kind of procrastination that art people are especially good at. It doesn’t look like procrastination. It looks responsible. Organised. Even forward-thinking. It is, of course, shopping for art supplies.
The white marker is a perfect example of how this thinking works. I saw something that solved a real problem for someone else, and my brain immediately mapped it onto a future problem I might have — someday, maybe, if things go a certain way. That’s not preparation. That’s buying supplies for an imaginary version of yourself.
There’s a real dopamine hit in a new purchase. The anticipation, the feeling that you’re about to gain a capability, that you’re investing in your art. It feels like moving forward. But potential isn’t the same as practice. And all those supplies sitting in your drawer aren’t making you a better painter — they’re just sitting there, quietly waiting for that imaginary artist to show up.
The trap is that buying feels like progress. It gives you the sensation of moving forward without the discomfort of actually sitting down, making mistakes, and working through them. It’s creativity without the creative risk.
You Don’t Need More Colours — You Need to Mix
I own 34 Mijello Mission Gold colours. The set is gorgeous — genuinely, when I opened it the first time, it was like looking at a little jewellery box of paint. Every shade you could possibly want, all in one place. I love it, and I don’t regret buying it.
But if I were starting over today? I’d buy a small, high-quality starter set and learn to mix from there.
Here’s the thing about having 34 colours: it’s practical, sometimes. If you reach for a particular shade constantly, having it ready saves time. But it’s also a little lazy — and I say that gently, because I’ve been that kind of lazy. When you have every colour already in the pan, you just grab the one you want. Which means you never actually learn where that colour comes from, what makes it warm or cool, what you’d need to shift it slightly. You skip the lesson entirely.
And that lesson matters. Understanding colour mixing — how to make a deep, rich dark that isn’t just flat black, how temperature shifts the mood of a whole painting, how two colours fight each other or harmonise — that’s one of the most important things you can develop as a painter. It lives in your eye and your instincts, not in a pre-filled palette.
A limited set forces you to think. It makes you mix, experiment, and occasionally be surprised by what you land on. That’s not a limitation — that’s learning.
Before you reach for a new colour, try this:
- Mix the colour you think you’re missing — you might land on something even better
- Experiment with warm and cool versions of the same hue by mixing in a touch of yellow or blue
- Try making darks without black — burnt sienna and ultramarine make a beautiful, deep neutral
- Swatch your existing colours side by side — you may have forgotten what you already own
The colours you mix yourself are the ones you’ll actually remember.
One Brush Can Do More Than You Think
An angled brush has been on my wishlist for a while. I’ve convinced myself I need it for cleaner edges and sharper lines — the kind of precision I sometimes struggle to get. Then one day I picked up my flat brush, pressed it lightly on its corner, and made exactly the stroke I’d been imagining. The angled brush is still on the wishlist. It’s just less urgent now.
A round brush pulled sideways gives a similar result too. The truth is, most versatile watercolour work can be done with two or three brushes at most — a medium round, a larger wash brush, and something small for detail. Everything else is a nice-to-have, not a need-to-have.
Constraints make you more creative, not less. The limitation of fewer tools pushes you to actually learn what each one can do.
The Rule I’m Trying to Follow
I’ve been trying to apply a simple rule: before I buy anything new, I have to paint ten sessions with what I already have.
Ten sessions. That’s it. Not ten masterpieces — just ten sits with my paints, working through whatever I’m working through. By the time I’m done, one of two things has happened: either I’ve figured out how to do what I wanted with existing tools, or I’ve confirmed — through actual use, not imagination — that the new thing would genuinely help.
Most of the time, it’s the first one.
When Buying IS Worth It
I want to be clear: I’m not anti-buying. I have to stop myself to hit that add-to-cart button. Some supplies genuinely matter, and quality tools do make a difference. But there’s a useful question to ask before any purchase:
“Will this help me practice something I genuinely cannot do right now — or does it just look nice?”
If the answer is the first, it might be worth it. If it’s the second, put it back.
The one area where I do think investing matters: paper. Good watercolour paper makes a real difference to how paint behaves, and working on poor paper can actually teach you bad habits. That’s a purchase I don’t hesitate on. A fourth similar shade of blue? That can wait.
My Tips for Spending Less and Creating More
- Wait two weeks before buying anything non-essential — the urge usually fades
- Swatch everything you own before buying new colours — you’ll rediscover what you have
- Spend at least one session trying to do the ‘new tool’s job’ with existing tools
- Put your budget toward paper quality first, everything else second
- Give yourself a practice challenge instead of a shopping trip: paint every day for two weeks with exactly what you have
The Supplies Aren’t the Problem
Coming back to watercolour after a long break taught me something important: my instincts were rusty, but they came back through practice — not through buying anything new. The Mijello Mission Gold paints I already owned were perfectly good. The brushes I already had were fine. What I needed was to sit down and paint.
Your supplies are probably good enough. The gap between where you are and where you want to be isn’t filled with a new colour or a new brush. It’s filled with hours of paint on paper, mistakes you learn from, and the slow, satisfying return of muscle memory.
So this is my note to myself: close the tab. Pick up the brush you already have. Start.
