One hour ago I was completely unconcious, curled up in bed asleep, when a knock came on the door. I peeked out the bedroom window to see the mail truck sitting in front of our house, so I ran to the door with sleep in my eyes and in my bed clothes to find our new mailman standing there with a Priority Mail box.
My paints and brushes arrived today!!! That was so quick!
Once I checked over the packing slip (and discovered a problem — see behind the cut for more on that), the first thing I did was open each tube and take a good hearty sniff. I was instantly transported back to another time and place … the crowded, loud and rowdy studios from my university days. The colors don’t really smell all that different, except for titanium white, which, to me at least, smells entirely different. Just so you know, they all taste slightly different as well, but I wouldn’t suggest anyone experiment to test my opinion on the flavors of paint. Brush licking (to shape the brush while painting) is a vile and potentially lethal habit I worked hard to break myself of. Just really not recommended at all. It was a completely a stupid thing for me to do, and I don’t know how I ever got started doing it. :P
The brushes are great too. Cheap, yes, but that’s what I wanted. They look like they will hold up better than I expected actually … the larger ones anyway. At any rate, they are well worth what I paid for them, particularly since I saw the same exact set at Hobby Lobby this weekend for a higher price. I have no idea what the bristles are, but they are hair of some sort. I suspect it’s hog bristle … from the ears of pigs (something that always made me giggle when I thought about it — still does). Not going to worry about it one way or the other. They feel the way I wanted them too (firm with little bend), and they will slop paint well enough. I tend to use other things than brushes while painting anyway … like palette knives, paper towels, old rags, and my hands. Yup, I never outgrew finger-painting. :D
As fate would have it, Hobby Lobby has Fredrix canvases on sale this week (my personal favorites), and later after rush hour is over, I am going to run over to the store and get a pack of three small canvas panels to play around with (and maybe an actual palette of some sort — never owned one before). Remember, I did promise my inner child we would have some fun painting pretty things before we jump into the topic of the death penalty. Besides, I need to practice. I haven’t held any sort of brush other than the sort you would use to paint walls in … well … forever and a day. Just like with the drawing, it is going to take me a bit to remember how it feels and get my bearings again. I’m on something of a deadline, so I better get to reacquainting myself with the painting process ASAP.
I am so freaking excited! I want to run and buy the canvases right now, but I know that if I were to do so, none of the housework would get done. Being as it is Monday and the house needs to be recovered from the weekend, I can’t put it off or ignore it. Best to just hurry and get it done, so I can move on to more thrilling escapades … like stinking up the kitchen with my smelly paints and at long last putting paint to canvas again.
Behind the cut you’ll find a lengthy bit of babble about the problems I had with my order, if you are interested in ready yet MORE of my yapping.
It never fails that on the rare occasion that I order something on line, there were problems. One caused an immediate panic attack but resolved itself just as immediately. The three primary colors were in boxes labeled “oil” and not acrylic. Once I opened the individual boxes, it appears they were merely mislabeled, as the contents were acrylics and not oils.
The second panic attack wasn’t so much of a panic attack as it was a fit of anger when I discovered that while the packing slip stated my order contained the 250 ml tubes I had ordered and paid for, the actual tubes themselves were the slightly cheaper and smaller 200 ml tubes. The difference in price isn’t so much that it makes me angry, but the difference in amount of paint has me a little peeved. That’s nearly one small tube less of each of the primary colors. I ordered the larger tubes for a reason. I am very liberal with paint application, and as I become re-accustomed to painting, I am likely to waste some at first. None of that matters really, seeing as the bottom line is … I didn’t get what I ordered.
Off to Amazon I went to send an email through their third-party vendor contact system … the one that gives you 1000 characters or less to state your issue. Yeah, me saying anything in 1000 characters or less. HA! Anyway, after honing my brevity skills, I managed to construct a pleasant complaint letter of 987 characters (always start with pleasant — more bees, honey, and so on). Amazon wouldn’t send it insisting I needed to keep it below 1000 characters. After more editing and reworking, I had it down to 975, and it still wouldn’t send.
Off to Amazon’s help area I went to send THEM a complaint about their system not being able to properly count characters and rejecting my third-party complaint email. Amazon immediately contacted me and fixed the problem in under 5 minutes. Kudos to Amazon!
Now that my email to the original vendor has been sent, let’s see how long it takes them to get back in touch with me about the original problem. Having read the customer feedback on them, apparently they can be very slow to rectify order problems, but in the end they always seem to do right by the customer. They would be wise to contact me before my smokes run out, as I can’t guarantee my next email will be quite so pleasant. I might even call them on the phone, though I do prefer having at least an electronic trail of communications with on line retailers. That was a lesson I learned the hard way. If you can’t get it in actual writing, at least get it in email. Use the phone only as a last resort when all other options have failed and you really want to scream at someone. I am not to the screaming stage yet anyway. I have the feeling they will do what they can to make me happy. Of course, I might be a little naive, but I’d rather be optimistic about it than angry … at least until they start pushing my buttons or being overly stupid.
Now … back to doing the happy dance because the paints and brushes arrived and doing the housework so I can get down to the fun stuff. :)