Recently I bought one of these awesome Rinse Well thingies. AKA, “The Watercolor Toilet.” Hah! Because when the water in the well gets dirty, you push that little button and it disappears into the well and fresh water automatically refills the basin. It’s a silly little tool for lazy artists who don’t like to get up and change their dirty rinse water. It’s not perfect. The well is a bit small if you’re doing a big splashy painting, but it’s perfect for dainty dry brush work that doesn’t require a huge pigment load. Also all the dirty water doesn’t disappear so the fresh water in the well is slightly tinged with whatever color was there. But it’s still a cool thing that will work for certain things I do in the studio. I like it. Because I like cool tools.
The other item I’m testing is the switch back to the creation of jpegs on my iPhone. Apple sneakily changed the default file type from jpeg to a proprietary file type they claim is better called HEIC (pronounced “HEEK”) in their last major upgrade. Well that’s a heiccup if you ask me because those HEIC files would upload anywhere and couldn’t be converted without paying for and downloading a conversion app. Grrr. What the HEEK Apple? So it turns out it’s easy to make your phone switch back in your settings under “camera” then “format” choose “Most compatible.” That’s it. And don’t we all want to win the award for Most Compatible? All except Apple.