Painting

Father's Day is on Sunday, so, naturally, I must make my papa something. Last year, I wrote him a poem about a waterfall, printed it out on thick paper and painted a waterfall behind it. This year, I wrote him a poem about our yard in June, which you can find here.
In the background, I painted flowers from our yard; alfalfa, roses, poppies, pinks . . . you get it. I drew those this afternoon, taking my painting supplies outside onto the deck-thing by the water.
So I wanted to talk about painting. My painting supplies, and other stuff painting related, as it's a big passion of mine.
My set of watercolors looks somewhat like this, but off to the left side, where you can't see, there's another row of green and row with several kinds of brown and black and gray. And, of course, the gaps in between aren't so white anymore. They are completely crusted with paint, all mixed together. I've had it for five or six years of continual use, so the tablets are very worn down and the white one only has a sliver of actual paint in it. I have other ones, including tube paints, but this one works the best for me.
As for brushes, beware of thick-looking dark brown brushes. For me, anything that looks like that is a total no-no. Of course, I'm sure there are some awesome dark brown thick-looking brushes out there. But all the ones I've have had prickles that fell out really easily and got all mixed up in your painting which is annoying. That having been said, make sure you have a mixture of tiny brushes and big brushes. I work mostly with delicate, tiny brushes, but someone people make splendid pictures with huge brushes. Whatever rocks your boat. For brush care, never leave them in water. If you put them aside, either lay them beside your water glass or stick them in handle-first. Make sure to wash them thoroughly after use, never let the paint dry on.
I use any old glass or jar or even a yogurt container for water. Warning: it's going to get stained. So don't use your mum's best glasses, or in fact, any of her glasses. An old mason jar or plastic container works well.
Make sure have a try-out paper. That's a necessity.
And now for paper. Any watercolor paper you buy should work, but I actually prefer thick sketchbook paper or scrapbook paper. For some pictures, watercolor works, but in general I prefer the above. For some reason. I'll use watercolor paper for blotchy landscapes, but for detail drawings . . . yeah.
So those are all the materials. I would talk about some of my techniques, but I have to go clean the bathroom. xD