Now in the past whenever I wanted to paint I'd run down to the art store and spend $20, $30 a tube and $30 to a hundred dollars on canvas, another couple hundred dollars on brushes and I'd be set. I had read all the books on the properties of materials, the fugitive colors, pigments, qualities of the various mediums, and was perfectly prepared to create a masterpiece.
...In all respects, of course, excepting for talent. and while it was certain the quality of materials would ensure my masterpiece survived it was also certain that by the time I was done I'd just lavished an awful lot of money on something that most definitely was not a masterpiece. My talent was clearly not equal to my vision...
Now, the rediscovery of disposable paints, a dollar a bottle, every color imaginable with names like "flesh tint", "expresso" and "blue", I find that for hundreds of dollars less I can create perfectly shitty paintings bound for the garbage, a hundred paintings for a fraction of the price I was formerly wont to spend.
I have entirely legitimate reservations about the quality of materials, the permanence of the colors, but given how seldom it is I'm pleased with my efforts this seems the perfect way to acquire the skills, an abundance of bad paintings made for the same price I once would have spent on a single bad one. And, presumably, I'll be getting better along the way, learning to mix and harmonize colors, at two or three dollars per painting it's cheaper than a course or degree at ACAD and allows for infinite experimentation. Now only to find the time...