I'm a trusting soul. I trusted, for example, the Google salesman who rang me this month to offer advertising: well, I thought - having been subjected to a skilful sales pitch - this has to make sense. With one sale, I could recoup the cost of the advertising. What I didn't grasp was that access to my advert would be via very specific keywords which were applied to my website in any event - so the chance of anyone actually seeing my advert was no greater than their stumbling over the site by accident, costing me nothing. So that's the last time I buy anything in response to a cold call - with £130 down the pan as a lesson. I offer this experience lest there be people out there who are as gullible as I am. But there can't be, can there.....? I also fell for all the advice given in art instruction manuals over many years; not that this has cost me anything like as much as ****** Google. Bitter? Oh no. Not I. Take, if you will, pencils. In numerous books, you'll be told that - in the words of one ex-mentor - "nothing harder than 2B is much use". Well, and granted I am not a draughtsman of any great note, I've never found 2B of much use anyway, but I took the message - if you want to produce good drawings, use a soft pencil. And there's just enough truth in that to mislead you entirely - scratching around with an HH with lead you with deep lines incised in the paper, and graphite marks so faint that those deep lines are your only means of seeing them. But the other day, I found a propelling pencil I'd picked up for free at a conference. It doesn't have a soft lead - I should imagine it's a B or HB; and of course it was sharp (and I'm lazy about sharpening pencils, and very bad at it to boot) - and I produced one of my best drawings in years: because I have that much more control over it. And why did all those books never mention the F grade of pencil - why the disparaging comment (from that same ex-mentor) that "anything softer than B pencils is only of use to the technical draughtsman"? (I was never any use at all at TD - however sharp my pencils ... this proves nothing, but I do like a good anecdote...) Why did a friend of mine, a professional artist, advise me against using carbon pencils - "because they flatter your technique"? When that's exactly what I wanted them to do.... (and it worked, too, when I'd thought through the advice and, obviously, discarded it). Why does one website I chanced upon the other day recommend oiling out a painting always - whether it obviously needs it or not (oiling out is the application of a thin coat of Linseed Oil or painting medium over a dry oil painting, to even out sunken/dull passages; it's said to be a good preliminary to varnishing)? Why would you want to oil out a painting already rich in medium, in which no dull or sunken areas appear? Truth is, I begin to suspect, we give other people - in all good faith - advice that has worked for us: and it can then get elevated into a rule. But why should it work for anyone else? To take an obvious example: I'm not good on, or comfortable with, very smooth watercolour paper - I like, and I just know I shouldn't say this, bearing my last blog in mind, a bit of rough.... It's commonly asserted, though, that the beginner watercolourist - which is me, basically: I came to w/colour late - would probably be happiest with a NOT surface paper: that may be quite true for most people, but not for me. So, if any novice were foolish enough to ask me for advice (note, I am being modest here) I should suggest that they learn to distinguish between useful rules that are generally true, and tips and techniques which may not suit them at all; to be wary of advice and to bear in mind that most of the time it reflects the experience of another artist with whom they may have nothing in common at all. And I should certainly advise anyone to make one iron rule: never, ever respond to a telephone call inviting you to spend money - and if you should be silly enough to listen to the caller in the first place, never divvy up there and then. Take time to think about it. Or you too could be facing the weekend with a single, not very attractive, figure in the bank, and a sinking feeling that you've been had.