I need some help for a campaign I DM (this means, my player Hardwool has to quit this thread now, please) and I'd be very grateful for some funky ideas.
Here's the thing: My player (we're in a one-on-one campaign) has a character who's really good in painting. It's one of his trademark skills, so to speak. So I'm on the lookout for some ideas how to let him use his skill as often as realistically possible, with cool effects and some impact on his campaign besides "I paint a painting in my downtime and earn money" (In our game it's more of a real-time thing, so there is usually no downtime to speak of). Naturally, one of the official stuff that springs to mind is handing him a bucket of Marvelous Pigments and let him have his fun. Yes, that's nice, but...
I'd like to have him create his own Pigments. We use a homebrew setting with different craft rules for magic items that substitutes some kind of manifested magic for the gp value and if the fluff is good, you don't really need the feat, etc... A bit freestyle, if you want to call it so.
So. Back to the Pigments. Plan is, have him find some kind of recipe, let him go on a reagent run on the side of adventuring and finally mix some buckets of those pigments.
What I need now are ideas on what kind of things would make nice, thematically fitting reagents. Monster parts, materials, herbs, stuff like that. We're currently level 2 and I'd like to have him collect the stuff during his adventures or with a bit of hunting for them in his freetime. We play with two gestalt characters who can handle their share of monsters, so that's no problem. I'm all for homebrewing and winging it, so if you have an idea, i.e. a monster that's not in the bestiary, I can handle that.
All input really appreciated and thanks for reading!