Just me casually carrying the gastronomic weight of my entire family on my back at easter dinner gathering 🙂‍↕️

Pre-COVID, around 2019-2020, I sat beside the Seine and watched an old man sketching the river’s edge. I quietly observed the way his brush moved, the movements were so assured and steady like he was drawing something he had already seen many times in his mind.At some point, he let me flip through his sketchbooks. The drawings were beautiful, yes, but what struck me most was the paper. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen, incredibly lightweight yet it held dense washes of watercolor without curling or bleeding, just soaking the pigment in. The surface was irregularly raw, fibrous, delicately textured, with just enough grip to catch dry media and just enough softness to drink in the wet. Needless to say, it was the most beautiful paper I had ever touched.I asked him where it was from. He shrugged, "une petite boutique… quelque part à Montmartre. Peut être elle n’existe plus..."That was all I had to go on.Since then, I’ve searched for this sketchbook, casually at first, then with a quiet kind of obsession. Whenever I stepped into an art supply store, I’d scan the shelves hoping to stumble across it. I tried online searches too, but most shops didn’t ship to my country, and the few that did carry them always seemed to be out of stock when I visited. I even brought sample photos to my favorite art stores in Asia. They could replicate the cover and the format, even the binding, but never the paper. And that was the only thing that mattered.Over time, the search became a ritual. A part of me knew I might never find it again. Then toward the end of 2023, I came across a youtube video, an artist flipping through what looked like that sketchbook. I left a comment, buried among hundreds. So I tried to reach out on Instagram, not expecting much but surprisingly she responded. She told me she found it in Kuala Lumpur and kindly shared the name of the store.After a few searches, I emailed the store, but unfortunately they were in the middle of relocating. Last year when I followed up again, she remembered me.The shop owner and I began to talk more. A simple product inquiry turned into full exchanges about brush weights, archival pigments, vintage nibs, obscure Japanese brands… Eventually she offered a workaround. A friend of hers was visiting from Europe and could carry the books back, then ship them to me via DHL (so I wouldn’t get hit with ridiculous customs). It was a complicated arrangement for a few sketchbooks.And this Tuesday, the sketchbooks I’d been searching for over five years finally arrived.It’s difficult to describe what makes this paper so special. It’s handmade, crafted from long plant fibers native to high altitude regions, which give it a rare balance of delicacy and strength. There’s no surface sizing, so pigment sinks deep into the fibers, creating a soft, muted depth. Each sheet varies slightly in thickness and tone, you can just tell it's handmade instead of by machine. It doesn’t try to be perfect. And that’s exactly why it is.People might see this as some kind of madness, a long ass search for some weird textured paper. But the truth is, I don’t want “almost right” things. I don’t want “close enoughs” or “pretty muchs.” I only want what carries that resonance you can’t explain but can’t ignore.I’ve also come to understand that the search wasn’t really about the paper. It was about a refusal to settle for less or for convenience. There’s a quiet kind of peace in knowing exactly what you want, even if it takes years to find. And when you finally do, it doesn’t feel like a triumph but it feels like a return.Here’s a quick water color piece.
Some washes don’t fail because of how it’s laid down on paper but because the paper chose not to hold them. And when that happens, when a particular thing moves on to something else by its own decision, you accept the loss but you don’t abandon your technique just like you don’t question the hand that reached the paper with care. I know my “all or nothing” mindset on particular things might kill me one day but oh boy I can’t give up on who I am

the universe probably cursed March 28 as an emotional spiral day on my personal calendar or something

Normalize betting on yourself hard and getting things done in silence.
The most valuable intangible asset I own is myself.

“If you’re smart and creative and talented then why do you get so attached, they’re just…chains”

Disclaimer: a very lighthearted banter
emperor penguin colony > army of the dead

practicing without gel manicures feels like going barefoot after wearing glass slippers