Santa Claus is comin to town

In fact this year he's arrived a bit earlier. I took the liberty of ordering my gifts by myself (with my wife's kind consent ;) and used the opportunity to stock up on some of the Andrea paints. I've already written about them earlier . Basically the idea is that you buy a set of six shades of a given color. I've found the black set more than useful so laying my hands on other ones was just a matter of time. I decided to get a white, flesh, silver and gold set. Seemed like the most useful choices for me as I find it hard to get a satisfying effect using GW's metallics (especially when I work on larger flat surfaces). I really like the soft tones of colors in the white set. I will give it a try when I begin working on a mounted Saruman model that's also a part of the large commission I'm working on at the moment. The flesh set also looks very promising as the colors are nicely matched in this one. The gold set will definitely come in handy as I use this color frequently. I was a little surprised by the inks as the bottles are slightly different than the ones I'm used to - see the picture. It seems like an interesting solution. The only problem is that the black ink in the gold set was not packed very well and I had to spend a while removing it from other bottles and from the box.

Buying sets like these might seem like a solution for lazy painters. This is probably true but not entirely. Andrea's paints mix very well with other acrylic paints. Also, if you want to get a really nice effect mixing them is still a must.
And to be honest, I'm a sucker for buying paints. I probably have more than I really need and a number of them is rarely used. I treat it as a part of hobby. Collecting miniatures, collecting paints, almost like two sides of the same coin. And since I paint large numbers of minis I like to have more options available at hand.
Four "military" colors from Reaper and a pigment fixer from MIG complete my Christmas list. I really like paints from Reaper as they have excellent coverage and good consistency. The downsides are that the bottles are a bit smaller than P3, Vallejo, etc. and they tend to clog after a while.
Now that all the paints are nicely assembled, the only thing lest to do is to start using these. Christmas break is getting closer so I may find some time for a solid painting session.
And here's yet one more classic. Somehow I am drawn the music from 40s. It seems to me that singers didn't try to go all gaga about how controversial and original they were and simply put their energy into making really good show. They definitely had what many of today's artists lack; authenticity and charisma.