Those kind folks at Derwent have been in touch again and sent me another parcel: a pressie of art materials play with. It came almost on my birthday too! I got all sorts of bits and bobs, some familiar, some new things to try...
They sent me another set of my all-time favourite tool: the Inktense watercolour pencils.
This 12 set is really all you need. I once went to their shop in the Lake District and bought lots of other colours to add to my kit, but have taken most of them out again, because these colours are so well chosen.
Inktense pencils are absolutely perfect for sketching on the go. I just love the way you can combine dynamic drawing with painterly mark-making and fill the page with vibrant colour, while carrying almost no kit - just a handful of pencils and a waterbrush.
Derwent also sent me some pastels and pastel pencils, knowing how I create my picture book artwork.
The pastel pencils were the perfect thing: really lovely quality of course, richer and softer than a lot of brands, but also very timely, providing me with some new and useful colours which I have already pressed into service, working on Class One Farmyard Fun. You need the pastel pencils for all the fiddly detail which is impossible to achieve otherwise: like all those itsy bitsy outfits the children wear, and tiny animals in the background. The Derwent pastel bars are just slightly harder than I like for my illustrations, but that will make them ideal for outdoor sketching, as soft pastels are a bit of a messy nightmare when you are out and about, so I shall save them to use for landscapes, when the weather is a bit warmer.
For the last 2 years running, John and I have enjoyed a week's caravan holiday in the Lake District, where I have spent my time sitting on top of hills, or down by the water, sketching every day, while John goes off walking. Once my busy period is over, I'm sure we'll be off to do it again, and I shall take my new Derwent pastels with me. Can't wait. Most exciting of all, Derwent sent me something I haven't tried before: a set of water-soluble, tinted, graphite pencils:
I tried them out on a recent sketchcrawl. It was one if my residency days, taking my volunteer group of academic newbie-sketchers out of the safety of the university, to draw in the big wide world for the first time. We didn't go far, just down the road to the Manchester Museum, the same place I took my Urban Sketchers last week.
I thought I would document the occasion by drawing them sketching, rather than focusing on the exhibits, and I used my new pencils to sketch Vanessa and Andy.
The Graphitint are similar to my Inktense pencils, because of being soluble, so I used the same technique - vigorous mark-making followed by quick, understated gestures with a waterbrush - but the Graphitint pencils were different to use in three important ways.
Firstly, the lead is softer than either Inktense or any regular watercolour pencils I have tried before, giving a thicker line which you can see really picked up the grainy surface of the watercolour paper, creating a slightly looser, more textured result:
Secondly, whereas the Inktense are extremely vibrant and explode into colour when you add the water, the Graphitint are far more understated: certainly the set I was given were slightly muted shades, which work well together to create a softer overall effect, whereas the Inktense tend to be more contrasting and zingy.
Lastly, the Graphitint colour doesn't change when wet, it just dissolves. Though less exciting than the Inktense, this makes them more predictable and so slightly easier to manage. It is less easy to 'overdo it' - with the Inktense pencils, if you apply too much pencil work before the water, you can quickly get into a mess. It just depends what you are after.I think these are going to be great for life drawing, although I have not had time to go in ages. Perhaps this will give me the push I need to make some time.
In the meantime, thank you Derwent, for my gorgeous pressies. Much appreciated.
Today I'll let you into my studio to look at how I organize my colored pencils.
I will warn you that this is one area where I'm a little... fussy. If you have an aversion to things that are too organized or orderly or color coordinated, BEWARE!
You may want to turn back now.
First up we have the Polychromos, which are my favorites and what I use the most, by far. By FAR. (I gave you the link to the manufacturer's site, but they don't have the best price, don't buy them from there! ~ scroll to the bottom of this post for cheaper places.)
I have 3 tins of them ~ 2 are the 120 set, 1 is the 72 set.
What I did was take out all the pencils in all 3 sets and reorganize them according to color.
They're not organized by number. Its just visual for my own amusement.
I open them out like this, but with some overlap, on my drawing table when I'm working.
There are gaps in the tins here, especially the browns, since I'm using some of those right now on my chocolate pieces, and have them somewhere else, handy (I'll show you farther down).
In addition to the ones in tins I have boxes full of 'extras', colors I use a lot of or need for specific pieces. I have lots and lots of black, white and ivory, and now a lot of browns, plus other colors that I've needed extras of for some past project. I have all these in a drawer in my art supply cupboard, and have them labelled like this so I know what's in the box.
There are more than this. Its obscene how many I have. If you ever need a color and the art supply stores say they're out of stock, its probably my fault.
I don't have any of the discontinued Soft Black though. I know who has them all but I'm not saying.
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Next up are my Prismacolors.
I found these plastic storage boxes at the art supply store ages ago and they work pretty well. You can adjust the little 'spacers' however you like; so I made a long section for newer pencils and a short section for stubbier bits.
I divided them all up, sort of, by 'reds' or warm colors, and 'blues' or cooler colors. (Although I just noticed a couple of greens have jumped their way over into the warm bin.)
This is by no means a scientific sorting. Its just sort of 'good enough', and when I need a certain color I can find it OK.
I don't use Prismas very much any more. I bought these way back, and some of them are ancient.
I also have some very interesting odd pencils which I'm sure are collector's items!
There's a Whitman, a Venus, and a "Koh-I-Noor" Polycolor.
And check out that little 2-headed striped number. I think I've had that since about the 4th grade. I used to have a whole set, not sure what happened to the rest of them. I never use that pencil; I just have it as a link to the past. I can't bear to throw it out.
I have one other plastic bin for just regular graphite pencils.
And here's my handy-dandy Tool Turn-about for all the pencils that are either in use on a project, or ones that I haven't "filed" yet. This thing is great, because it keeps the pencils in one spot and keeps them from rolling off the table.
I also have tins of: Coloursoft, Inktense, Graphitints, and watercolor pencils. I just keep them in their original tins, nothing fancy.
I'm really disciplined about keeping these babies organized. I re-file them all after each project. The rest of my studio may be a disaster, but my pencils are always in pretty good shape.
I think if there was a fire (god forbid), after my cats I'd save my pencils.
Here are the 3 main places online I use to order pencils and other supplies:
Dick Blick
Daniel Smith
Jerry's Artarama
Go to each site and sign up to get emailed specials and sales sent to you. You can save a bundle that way!
(As I'm writing this, Polychromo prices vary wildly: Jerry's has them for $1.69, Daniel Smith for $1.39 and Dick Blick for $.95! If you buy them from the manufacturer's site they're $2.69 each!!!! Yikes. But the prices fluctuate, and sometimes the "tin" price will be cheaper at a place that has the open stock for more. So be sure to check around when you're shopping. And there are more places than this, just google "art supplies".)
That's all for today~
Kanye West is bitching again.
Not only did he throw a hissy backstage after not winning any of the five VMAs he was nominated for, but he's saying that MTV - going for scandal over quality performances - wrongly went with Britany Spears instead of him.
He's also mad because he was relegated to hosting a suite party rather than perform on the main stage.
Oh, and he's also pissed because Justin Timberlake, who also hosted a suite party, ended up on the mainstage to close the show.
Note: I missed that performance because I'd turned off the hot mess that was the VMAs after the Incredible Hulk, errr, I mean Dr. Dre presented somebody with an award. That's right, I forget who. It was that unimportant to me.
In light of all these injustices, Kanye has "squashed" the "beef" (which, for the record, Fifty started, not Kanye) between him and Fiddy because he feels there's greater good in them unifying against the evils of MTV.
Under normal circumstances, I'd say something like Shut and Up. But here's the thing...
Kanye's just saying what lots of artists probably feel, anyway. As much as Kanye can come off as a very spoiled, whiny, self-important man-diva, the fact is, at their core, many creative people are (divas, that is)- at least where their projects (book, movie, CD) are concerned.
I'll put myself out there, as an example - obviously I feel my product (So Not The Drama) is as good as any other YA book on the market. When someone else's book gets a big boost, special honor, recognition etc...it's not unheard of for me to think - Hmm...why not my book?
However, I rarely air that publicly. It's pointless.
And, to date, I've not gone on any rants about how on earth my book could have been overlooked on this or that state's "best" lists or as a Booksense Pick or B&N Featured book. Not getting those honors are as much of the business as getting on those lists are.
You wonder. You wish for similiar success. You move on.
I, am the norm.
Kanye is in the minority. And because he's in the minority, it's easy to believe that he's alone in feeling his work deserves certain accolades.
I doubt, very seriously, he is.
No one writes books or sings songs for awards and honors. But because awards and honors are part of the package, there is definitely a certain expectation that your product will one day snag them.
Truth is, it's crass to ask for recognition. Another truth is, sometimes because of stunts like the one MTV pulled (the Britany mess) an artist has to sometimes be willing to look like an a**hole to remind people - it should always be about quality!!!
Books, music, movies are supposed to stand on their own. But the reality is, each and every one of these arenas is highly political. And Kanye knows this. He knows that sensationalism will win over a high-powered performance, because it makes for better next day buzz.
I mean, Britany was a hot, hot mess! And I won't waste another word on that.
But I will say, in principal, I agree with Kanye.
The VMAs is a huge venue. Artists who open the show typically are either "now" because of their chart topping single or hot because of a multi-plat CD. Britany is neither now nor has out a CD. And for the record, the single she sang is not fire! MTV put her on so people would talk.
For an artist who did bother to put some blood, sweat and tears into their album; did bother to sacrifice sleep and maybe quality time with fam to lay down the best tracks and does have something on the line in the way of sales for an album that dropped two days after the VMAs...for an artist like that to play second fiddle to a confused, damn near washed up twenty-five year old who seems to have lost her dance swagger on top of multiple missed cues in her lip syncing?
Well, I can see Kanye's point.
Ratings. Sales. Moving Units. They're king.
But when the very venues meant to help an artist move those units and bring attention to their hard work moves their focus to pop culture white noise, artists better speak out or at least be glad artists like Kanye are willing to.
Ever the media-buying librarian's friend, MTV has announced the nominees for this year's Video Music Awards, more popularly known as the VMAs.
I love the names of some of these categories: Most Earth-Shattering Collaboration; Quadruple Threat of the Year; Monster Single of the Year. Best of all, though, are the full-length videos nestled right next to the nominees' names and annotations. I may have to watch the "Girlfriend" video 500 more times, and catch my first-ever glimpse of Rihanna's "Umbrella" (ella, ella, ella).
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Thanks for this post. I've been struggling to keep my pencils organized. I sort mine kindof like yours, but I need a way to keep up with ones that need to be reordered. I don't buy in 'bulk' like you do!
You've got some pencils there, girl!
Too funny - I keep my pencils in the very same plastic caddy divided in a very similar fashion.
Great minds . . . .
:)
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oooh thanks for showing :) i actually am re-organising just about every room and thing of the house at the moment, so this post comes in a timely manner :)
i have been reading alot lately about people who organise in order of colour and value ... i was thinking of trying this if i can work out how to store them so it works :)
thanks again for sharing