You might already know that I formulate and make cosmetics (makeup, body, and hair care products) and paint watercolors. Well, I have somewhat combined the two pursuits and now I formulate, mull, and package fine art supplies by hand.
I had always wanted to make my own fine art supplies –especially paint– and now I do. I have learned how to and practiced making watercolor paint by hand. Then, I developed a line of two palettes (one matte and one shimmery; also available as an empty travel palette) and eight single pans, from which you can blend any color in the spectrum.
First, I wanted to develop the ultimate travel palette. Well, let me back track a little bit. I grew up in San Francisco, California and when I was a kid, there was a little shop, called “Sinopia” that sold pure fine art pigments. I wasn’t much of a painter as a child, and certainly not good enough to warrant the expensive of such costly pigments, but I did love to look at them and imagine a professional artist with jars of rare earth and laboratory-synthesized pigments, mixing up their own custom paints.
Sinopia was very close to (right around the corner from) Flax, which was the big, venerable and ancient fine art shop near the corner of Valencia Street, the barrio (Latina district) thoroughfare that my family’s business was located on. I could visit them after school and tell that the factory-made art supplies and paints were very different from the quaint, boutique, handmade supplies.
Fast forward to graduate school, when I fell in love with a very unique style of tattooing that didn’t even have a name yet at the time. A completely original artist, Xxxxxxxx, had taught herself how to tattoo (after a lifetime of fine art study) and developed her own style, which (decades later) gained recognition through the internet, social media, magazines, and conventions. Literally more than 20 years after she started her style, the broader genre in general has come to be known as “Watercolor Tattooing,” with Xxxxxxxx recognized as a major proponent of it by publications as prestigious as the Xxxxxxxxx.
