When I paint outside I do add one color to my palette and that’s cerulean blue, which is a warm blue. It helps me when I’m mixing a color for the sky on a bright day or some of the ocean water mixtures.

Here’s a photo of my box of paints. There’s about 25-30 tubes of paint piled up in there but I only use about half of them…the rest are really souvenirs from trips to the art store wanting to try a new or different pigment. I’ll often decide later that they have no practical use for me and those tubes eventually find themselves at the bottom of the box.

I just noticed in this photo that you can see two tubes of Alizarin Crimson next to each other; one almost empty and one half used. This is typical of me, using paint from a new tube when I haven’t completely emptied out the first. I’m not sure why I do this, although it seems to be consistent with other things in my life. I have a stack of books by my bedside that I’ve only read parts of. I just find the parts I’m interested in, read those parts, then pick up another book.

A more simple explanation is that I just like the feel of pushing out the paint in a new tube. It’s like squeezing out toothpaste from a new tube of Crest. There’s just something satisfying about it.