Random Thoughts

🎮 My gaming YouTube profile suggested a Let's Play of Mini Metro, a puzzle game about building urban train systems, and about halfway through I got twitchy wanting to try things, so I went in search of where I could buy it. (As an aside, I really recommend IsThereAnyDeal for getting an overview of the pricing of PC games.) Anyway, it told me it was on sale on the Humble Store (sadly, it isn't anymore), however before I headed over there it occurred to me to search my inbox in case I'd already bought it in a bundle, and it turned out it was in the Itch.io Indie Bundle for Palestinian Aid! So I loaded it up on the media PC and had a happy couple of days building train lines. I can definitely see it being a stressful game for some people, but I found the ability to continue in "endless" mode took the stress out of it for me and I could just enjoy trying to optimise my system.

🎨 My watercolours and swatching tools (see last post) finally arrived! I had a nice, chill time swatching all 34 of my watercolour tubes (although now my shoulder hurts - maybe I shouldn't have done all 34 in a single day). I have updated my watercolour spreadsheet with the new colours accordingly, although I didn't think to mark them in any way. I should have added a date column on this. Now I just need to... make some art? That sounds fake.

🖼 Relatedly, I just discovered the concept of Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) and I love it and want to make some. I also have a box of blank watercolour postcards I recently rediscovered! Filing tiny art under the list of things I'd like to post people if I ever get around to making a form.

📖 My library hold on Rainbow Rowell's Any Way the Wind Blows came in, so I'm about to start reading that. Here's hoping I like it more than Wayward Son!

I recently purchased a very cute little travel watercolour palette - Eraldo Explorer's Watercolour Set from Riot - with intention of replacing the paints with my own tube watercolours. Hilariously it turned out the existing paints are glued so firmly into the pans that I can't remove them, and the replacement empty half pans I purchased are too big. So now I have to carefully sand down 1mm from each pan to make them fit.

ANYWAY, once that's done I need to choose 12 colours to go in the travel palette and I would love to hear from other people who work with watercolours. I mostly paint flowers and landscapes but with a travel kit I might end up doing urban sketching... To be honest I spend more time researching paint pigments and watercolour techniques than actually painting.

I've shared my watercolour spreadsheet here.

Questions and advice welcome!