This one's gonna be more of a rant than a ramble, so bear with me.

So there are three art stores in my town (all from the same brand), and they are my go-to places when I need art supplies, mostly drawing paper, fine-liners and brush markers. As far back as last November I noticed that two of them basically stopped re-stocking the aforementioned brush markers (i.e. they were just selling off the ones they had left over and weren't getting any new ones). This was a problem for me, since markers are the equipment I tend to use up the fastest, so when I run out of a particular shade I need to replace it. Fortunately, the third store (which was the most recent to open) still had plenty of stock, so I increasingly relied on it for my drawing needs.

Cut to last weekend and me finding out that the third store has been closed permanently. Luckily, I re-stocked on some of the markers I use most frequently last month, but they won't last forever. Which begs the question: what happens when they run out? What am I going to use to shade and color my work? Am I going to have to pay a lot of money to order stuff from abroad?

It's times like these when I start to entertain the idea of finally biting the bullet and transitioning to doing things digitally. Problem is, art tablets aren't that cheap, and the time I have for drawing is limited enough as it is. I really don't want to end up buying this expensive thing that's just going to sit on my desk because I won't find the time to use it.

Just needed to get that out in the open.