Get Ready, Get Set, Make Art

I’ve prepared the following post to be added as this week’s contribution to the new collaborative blog Studio Shots – Tuesday.  The topic this week is artists’ tools and materials.  Anyone with an interest in art can participate.  Visit the blog to see various artists’ studios that were added during the blog’s first week of existence, tools and materials added this week, and the easy instructions for joining the fun.

Portable Art Studio

This is my portable art studio – an art journal and a box of art supplies.  I can pick it up in a moment and be ready to go with it, to a park bench, on  trip, or just to my living room chair.  It contains: the prepared art journal, a ROYGBIV assortment of Prismacolor pencils plus black, white and gray, a plastic eraser, an electric eraser with spare inserts, a pencil sharpener, a burnisher, a set of Derwent sketching pencils and charcoals, a set of micron archival and waterproof sketching pens ini sizes 005 to 08, a 2B pencil, a mechanical pencil, a fat sketching pencil and some “magic pencils” that contain variegated colors in one lead.  Pretty minimal, but I’ve never needed anything for sketching yet that wasn’t in my portable art studio.

Sketching subject deteriorates before my eyes

This is my current sketching project, or, rather, a picture of the sad remains. A few days ago, I thought this bouquet was too pretty not to be preserved in a sketch. Today, it’s going to take all my imagination to record its former glory, in spite of the blocking in I did when it was still in fairly good shape. An example of the peril of procrastination!

Art journal with blocked in bouquet sketch and blank page

My notebook, like my box of drawing materials, is always ready to go. When I get a new journal, I paint each page with acrylic paint (or watercolor, or whatever) to prepare a background for sketching later on. The background on the right hand page above is similar to the one on the left , which I chose for my vase of flowers. I love this stage because it is so free-form.  Sometimes I tear paper pieces and paint them onto the surface, or paint over paper pieces and then remove them. I might add some metallic paint, interference powder, or paint a page with many layers of glaze, diluting the paint and holding the journal upright while it  drips down the page. Nothing can happen that can’t be used as a background at some time or other.

Finished colored pencil sketch

This is the finished colored pencil sketch. Pencil was heavily applied on the flowers and vase, then burnished so the waxy pigment would fill in the paper texture.

The paper in this journal is an unnamed, general variety, not the best for colored pencil work. I enjoy working with pencils in my portable studio, because they’re light, there is no mess, minimal smearing on other pages in the journal, and no set-up time. Oh, and I love the bright colors, too. I think I can find some paper more suited to colored pencil work.  There will be a web search coming in the near future. Maybe this afternoon.

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