u/nightskyflowers

A little story time... I still cannot believe this happened. Back then, about eight years ago, when I started painting (and without realizing it became addicted to art supplies) I started with acrylics and would love to work with a palette knife for my earliest works. I did not understand the difference between high viscosity and low viscosity acrylics.

So I bought a set of iridescent chameleon paints by Arteza. But the set was highly fluid, they had a very low viscosity. Anyways though, I would still try to use it with a palette knife (the result is the last picture I uploaded, and I love this flower painting anyways somehow and still sometimes can't believe I created art work I like).

Yes, the set was not very useful for me during my early days as acrylic artist. Except the iridecent chameleon white. It had high viscosity and would harden into these incredibly fine, beautiful pastose water lilies, it was exceptional. It was definitely the most beautiful one of all the iridescent or pearl whites I already had bought before and instantly became my favorite. Golden, Sennelier, whatever, you name it. I tried all the iridescent white acrylics, but this one, it was so special, it allowed me to create such fine petals in my style. A style, which I had developed during maybe my first real super intense artistic phase that was a very intense rush.

I was so happy to see Arteza offered the iridescent white as single tube and instantly bought it again a few weeks later. But then, the suprise: it was totally different. It was super fluid and worlds apart from the pastose white, that beautiful pink shimmery perfect acrylic that I adored. I never found a white again that would harden into such fine flowers like this one. I also did not know what additives to add to enhance the viscosity of fluid acrylics. So I just gave up and accepted the sad fact that Arteza had changed the formula of the white just shortly after the release of the set.

I upload a few examples for my water lilies so you see what I mean. The first picture is my favorite lily, the one I created with this legendary iridescent white by Arteza, the one I dream to create again, but simply can't. I even wrote to Arteza on Twitter back then, jokingly asking whether they can sell the high viscosity version of this iridescent white in 1000ml bottles. And I will contact them again if this community should grow, I promise, when I am someone important, lol. I still miss this white, it helped me create the most beautiful water lily in the world, every other white is a gamble compared. Oh, the misery...

I was such a noob back then, but I love this story. I never figured out how to use the set again, while I still hoard it like a hamster and love to just own it. I know the day will come, this is what I have learned as a humble collector of art supplies, any kind of medium can be useful one day. And I am at peace with having spent all my lunch money for several years on stuff I never needed.

Maybe you have a story about art supplies as well for this community?

Everyone is invited to help to make this community a little better and we are all about art supplies talks. Especially when you are a crazy collectors who just loves to collect paints, brushes or whatever tool is needed for a special niche of art. Or simply want to rant why brands do this, that, or want to share the true story behind why you eat art supplies on toast at the end of the month. Misery loves company, but validation also is a form of empowerment that belongs to art, so let's be positive, honest and enjoy our tools and time together.

This channel aims to be not too restrictive, just a few guidelines are developing to ensure we talk about art supplies. But this can be a very general term, so hopefully the freedom leads to fruitful posts and community engagements that are fun!

Whether considering post flairs, certain settings or functions - which features would you like to see, what kind of topics do you want to be discussed and what kind of content should not be shared here? I am interested in your opinion and if anyone wants to become an early bird and part of a mod team, please write a DM or apply anytime - pretty happy to engage and hopefully see reviews and stories all about art supplies as well as art work that was created with certain tools you love, as well as many other topics that are related to art supplies.

Especially considering post flairs some input from our visitors would be awesome, so they can be set up and allow users to choose a flair if they like too, for example, when they do a test, review or want to ask collectors and master collectors what kind of brands and products they would recommend, or when they have a certain question about a painting or brush set for example or whatever regarding questions all about art supplies come to your mind.

At the technical side some time is needed to adjust and figure out how this all works, having a small community on reddit. Until then, feel free to post anything you like, from swatches to little videos, reviews, questions. Have fun!

a sad, mourning cat mom is still a cat mom :_)

Welcome to r/artsuppliesjunkies! 🎨✨

You love the finest watercolors, but can also tell our community the subtle differences between affordable art supplies and want to share your knowledge? You haven't started collecting pencils yet, while you know, one day you will use all you own as a mixed media artist, or somehow you love to just procrastinate or rather collect than create? You value your fine tools and wanna show off? You are a strict minimalist and want to discuss the perfect cool red or which blue is your favorite, most versatile friend? Or you killed your credit card, yes, sold your soul, but you say, you'd do the same again, just like me, even in a second life?

This is a general reddit for all kinds of talks. Whether you struggle with buying too much, are overwhelmed by all the choices your stash has to offer. Or maybe you want to share delicate swatches, ask about a certain brand, learn about niche products, get to know more about regional art supplies specialties? There is a broad variety of topics we can talk about, so feel free to share with us what excites you related to art supplies.

Together we find the next perfect brush, work on limited palettes, palette by palette (who would ever truly be happy with just three primaries, come on, and if you are such a minimalist, don't you want the good stuff, the pigments that make an artist's heart beat faster?).

Limited editions, high end pigments, oh, lapius lazuli, my heart... How do you organize your art supplies? Are you messy, do you have the next level hack for us? How do you define excess, how do you spell style, what's your classy set up?

Whether you ordered all pencils on Amazon, or you are sad you don't need to buy certain things twice, while you own half of Jackson's Art store - you are welcome here! You can ask us addicted minds what we think you might like, whether the finest artist quality or valuable student grade paints. This is a place for open minded, joyful discussions and since nobody of us is quite the same, we all have certain things we love and want to share. In the end all that matters is that we talk about the tools that excite us, share art work and help each other. Either by finding understanding, relating to each other, or by discovering new art supplies, or even trading art cards made with our favorite art supplies.

We want to hear your story, no matter what grade the quality of your favorite tool is. Which paper do you keep for special occasions, which limited edition product made you go rob a bank? Which affordable brand is a steal? Which niche brands are the best, what do you produce and want to share with the community? Show us your portfolio of products, art works, your set up and gear.

If your collection grows faster than an avalanche, you are definitely among your kind now. We are kindred souls, curating carefully our favorite palette, while just trying to share the excitement of smelling fresh exquisite paper, the feel of its structure, the love for details. If you are still unsure what to buy first, ask us, we love to share lovingly staged art supplies pictures and share our wisdom.

How many tubes of cobalt turquoise can you own? We would say, yes, exactly! As many as you want. Which brush is your favorite brush, how did it transform your art process? We want to know everything, get insights into the many aspects of art creation. The furstration, anger about yourself and your shopping habits, we want to feel the fragile doubts that connect us all. Let's have a talk about everything. Art supplies are life! Next time, no judgement, when you go completely out of control, you know there is a place where your story is welcome. This is what makes us human, and I'd say anyways, being an art supplies junkie is way more human than your guilty conscience wants to make you think. Feel validation, my friend, your struggles and the sparcle in your eyes when those precious 15ml, arrive, are beautiful. Swatch them all, mix them, show us - one day you will find your peace and realize, there is a time for every tool. Spoil yourself, you have our elders' blessing.

​Every tool is a work of art in itself. Let’s get all nerdy, geek out, talk, shop, and celebrate our passion for fine materials together and discuss discount offers! Here is the place where we can grow together, gain insight, enlightment, to break through bad habits through reflection and celebrate the wild child in us that loves to play.

I am u/nightskyflowers, a floral artists from Berlin, and I would openly admit, my art supplies collection is sometimes wasted on me. I am overwhelmed by the choices and my addiction is just really truly funny. But it is never wasted when painting my sweet kitty. There is some kind of peace that finds you once you accept yourself and finally enjoy the journey, with all its aspects, its ups and downs, the good, bad and the ugly.

Please post anything what you think the community might be interested in. I want this community to become a place where there are just a few restrictions, where the variety of topics all related to art supplies shines.

If you like to introduce yourself, if you don't and just post a picture, which says more than a thousand words - do as you like, feel free to write us long, weird, autistic monologues or sharp descriptions of the science behind a paint or tool. I want you all to have fun here and to feel welcome.

If you are interested in becoming a mod or in leaving hints on reddit to invite new art supplies enthusiasts into our community, please don't hesitate to contact me and to tell other reddit users that we exist. Thanks for being part of the critical mass that could lead this project to success, a forum, where we gain insights about art tools and where we always learn to be better artists, no matter where we are right now and how we chose our tools.

Can Can (u/nightskyflowers)

P.S:: I finally ordered the holy grail, I worked so hard for it while streaming to my 1-2 viewers on Twitch, my first lapis lazuli 10ml tube by A. Gallo. I want the eyes of my kitty to sparcle, never wasted. There is a time for everything.

my beautiful kitty, i miss you...

the first is one of my favs now, he was barely 2,5kg in the end, but still looked magnificiant and was full of sweetness, and dignity. no matter what happened, i see the most beautiful kitty in the world...

this was just some creative exercise with no goal at all, no exspectations and i didnt think that the outcome was too good, but my psychiatrist, lol, yes, he said, i should sell these swatch art cards, so nice.. he calls my brushstrokes delicate and enchanting, and alone that is healing...

so i wanted to paint my cat, so i extracted the edges of a photograph of my kitty wit gemini ai, took my beloved shinhan mega palette and followed my flavour of the month, alizarin crimson and indigo with a little myosotis lol, put some pencils over them cs i got my first 7 caran d'ache lumanance pencils lol... totally in hamster mode... ... i just love such details, like an autist... lol... but me and my art supplies, just a never ending story. sometimes i just love talking about my stuff more than painting, but what i learned is that no matter how much you own, or how little, the time comes and you find use for any tool. any, even recycled food cans of your kitty.

this is btw my milo, who just went over the rainbow bridge... he is my muse. my heartbeat, my love. my babyyyy... i am a total noob, i ask ai which colors are in harmony, look up the color wheel after 8 years of minimalstic floral painting... sometimes it is luck, but this time.. it was somehow a certain kind of skill chain. i love this painting of my cat, it means a lot to me...

much love!

TLDR: ai empowers me and helps me learn, also as an artist (and i love gemini)

as an artist who cannot draw, i feel totally empowered by google gemini. i had to let my teenager baby cat go recently, too recently, and i spent the last weeks painting him. first i worked with an edge extractor, a simple app that allows me to use a gradient like sobel to extrat the outlines of my cat. buuut i gotta admit, using google gemini is just easier, and compared with chatgpt gemini actually listens when i say i just want simple outlines. now the work of today, my kitty with angel wings and a fairy representing my grandma picking him up, beause he is family... sob... is being created with the help of gemini.

i first asked gemini to extract the edges, give me simple outlines like in a coloring book and add a fairy since i dont know how to draw a fairy nor have an original reference picture. i create abstract art mostly, so i just need the proportions and do my thing the way i think. then i asked for angel wings, and then i asked for fluffy wings, but instead i got a chunky cat. but i love this picture of my kitty the way he is, with his 2,5 kg left he was still the most beautiful cat in berlin, living in a street that is called literally beautiful street proves it. welp...

so then i asked several times with the first sketch to remove flower pots and window shelf, add whimsical trees and flowers on the bottom part. i will paint the flowers in a very abstract, minimalistic way since i am a minimalist floral artist, so this will all become more original piece by piece.

do i feel like a scam as artist? no. my art work is so simple, it cant be recreated by google. nobody can copy me. do i hesitate to share this in the /painting channel? oh, yes, i do. if i would use only the edge extraction app nobody would say something, but AI is so hated. i mean, i dont like people losing their jobs, but to be honest, as a science and technology historian i kinda see it a little differently. there were even protests when wheels were invented, every innovation lead to rejection of the change, and it reminds me of kuhn's ideas about scientific revolutions and it maybe my antipsychotic antidepressant, but i see it all positive right now.

i feel empowered by google gemini. i dont have much money and it is for free and it always helps me with everything. i just joined the gemini reddit cs i truly wanna believe in google mind's ceo after having seen a documentary about him, though i am not the most trusting soul. but i hope google chooses people over profit. dont be evil, i been there ever since alta vista wasnt the big thing anymore and google appeared and swallowed youtube.

but anyways, today i feel artistically empowered because, for the love of God, i can't draw and i dont have visual imagination. i just trace my kitty his outlines to get the proportions right and then i make it all super abstract.

today i realized though, i learned how to paint trees, how to look with a finer eye on the flowers, the perspective each one has... i paint since 8 years now and i always painted with dots, lines and circles. my style is super minimalistic and i struggle with color theory, overdo marks, dunno how to handle my tools. i would love to say i am still a newbie. but i learned a lot along the way and gemini is just perfect for me. i ask it what i couldve done better, for example, considering the alizarin crimson red painting of my kitty and it gemini tells me about the background, how i couldve muted the colors, how i could've painted the nose a little more colorful with soft washes and i ask it sometimes which colors my flowers should have and let it analyze my gouache watercolor backgrounds. i also can learn playing piano on my own, google answers all my questions. i feel empowered.

even the masters traced, so i trace this with a lightpad onto better paper as a next step. i hope you are curious, when i am done i plan to post the result here again. so this is totally work in progress.

what do you think about AI and art? i am not a scammer, i just learn. yes, i feel empowered. all the courses i could never afford... gemini empowers me to learn on my own. i dont feel threatened by AI as a traditional artist, though i believe in robotic taxes and social democracy, i rather feel empowered. there is no other word. so i would hope the art community would chill out a bit and stop demonizing ai. yes, scammers are fuckers, nothings changed. but learning is king. like my kitty. yes, the king of all things in the pancosmic order. bow!

thanks for reading, much love!

Traced a photograph of my cutie, the Luminance pencils by Caran D'ache are so good and juicy, and for the eyes I used gold Polychromos by Faber Castell and some Museum Aquarelle pencils. I just own a few pencils and am not so good with this, but I am still a little proud. I hope you like this, I usually paint minimalistic flowers, but recently I started to paint my kitty and I love to work with colored pencils, pastel pencils and other different kinds of paints.

This QOR watercolor has a special binder, I think called aquazol. I really love this set and swatched it some long time ago. On the last page the ultramarine pink is by M. Graham, and the Jaune Brilliant by Holbein.

i am really happy with how this turned out. i painted milo during a two hours live stream on twitch yesterday and had to look up a color wheel to decide which color the background should be. painted with delicate cobalt turquoises by winsor & newton and shinhan, which are a little more greenish and the other a little more blueish. then i added some highlights with a cobalt turquoise soft pastell and polychromos, some luminance pencils and added some shine with a pearl white soft pastel by sennelier. really glad the eyes turned out well because i was very unsure how to color them in a matching color because my kitty his eyes are green with a little saphire light blue. i used a gold polychromos later. oh, and yes, i extracted the edges of a photograph and transferred the shapes and outlines with a light pad. i usually paint minimalistic flowers, but want to create memories with my teenager kitty :) the princeton neptune dagger brush 1/4 is king when it comes to adding fine details. to be honest, i often think my art supplies are wasted on me bc i collected the finest stuff in these 8 years that i paint now. but this feeling is gone when i use my tools for this precious creature. and yes, he is supposed to look grumpy in this one.

i painted my kitty milo for the first time in march, but could not post it here yet because i had not enough reddit points. i am proud of this one, though i traced the most of it with the help of an app that helps you extract the outlines of a photograph. it is painted mostly with gouache, some pastell pencils and acrylic markers. i usually paint minimalistic flowers, but this is a subject of love. my kitty is 17 years old now and sadly has kidney problems, so i am happy about any prayer for him, thanks! much love to the gouache community, i am a big fan...

I love this swatch sheet, though it suffered a little bit and got a little dirty. I hope you still enjoy the photograph :)

I bought these a few years ago, right after having bought the 24's set of White Nights. These were my first Daniel Smith and Holbein paints, also had to get as many turquoise colors as possible 😄

Edit: Hello to everyone, what a sweet pleasure this new community exists, I love swatch art!