Preparing to fly. Preparing to paint.

A little nerve-wrecking, what with the pretty recent news about the eruption of Mount Ontake in Japan. Plus the news of typhoon which will be making landfall on Tokyo later today.. At least the weather seems to look good for the few days after. *Fingers crossed*

XB and I will be flying to Tokyo for a short vacation the coming week. Amidst the research on craft places and mountains to visit, I was contemplating on getting a watercolor travel kit to jumpstart the habit of doing some kind of fast illustration/artwork daily by getting my feet wet during this trip.

I must have not been looking hard enough, but I had a tough time searching online for a local arts supplies shop that sells renowned brands of water color travel kits. 

I tried looking at Art Friend, but couldn't find any at the Clementi branch (I went back to the Bras Basah branch a few days back, and I saw that they had restocked the Daler Rowny full pans kit). "Overjoyed" near Little India MRT station stocks only Pebeo brand, which I am not too sure if it is any good since there is almost zero reviews on it..

Out of exasperation, I almost bought the Akashiya Watercolor Palette Box from Jetpens.com while toying myself with the idea of also getting the Sakura Koi Watercolor set to justify the high shipping cost from the US. 

Eventually, I managed to find a local art store (one with a pretty long history too.. Since 1967..), Straits Art Co., that sells a large array of paints, brushes, papers and canvases. The lady recommended the Van Gogh (from Royal Talens) watercolor pocket box kit for beginners like me. Apparently, this is a student grade watercolor paint higher up on the quality scale as compared to other student grade brands.

Let's see how this goes!