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A Lot of Drawing Materials to Choose from in Your Leisure Time
Whatever it takes, overcome your leisure time inertia and draw! Last blog, I recapped some of what I think are the most popular materials for drawing, and the ones I've been blogging about for more than a week now: graphite ('lead') pencils, charcoal pencils, compressed charcoal, colored pencils, rollerball pens (pen & ink), and art markers. At least these are my most popular drawing materials, and the ones I keep on hand. There are others, of course, that will attract their own fans, dip-pens (and ink) or watercolor pencils, for example. Then there's the mixed media that I haven't gotten into yet, and will save for future blogs. This is where you combine two or more mediums in one piece, for example, rollerball (pen & ink) and watercolor, or acrylic, or be creative and use something else, that's what art's about. If any of these other materials sound interesting to you --go for it.
Other Stuff
You're probably thinking there can't be room for anything else in my 'drawing' drawer, but there is. I call it 'other stuff.' This is kind of like the stuff you keep in your junk drawer (the one we all have and rarely clean out) except this stuff is used for drawing. What am I talking about?
- Erasers - yes, we all make mistakes, at least I do, so you will need some of these. "They" will tell you the only kind to have and use are kneadable erasers. Supposedly they're the best kind because they do the best job at lifting debris off the surface and are self-cleaning. Well, you do have to knead them (like dough I guess) to get to a clean spot. I will tell you, after a while they turn from the original white or light grey to smudgy black if you are erasing graphite or charcoal. I'm a little skeptical of just how long they stay self-cleaning, so I have a couple of other regular erasers. One is art gum. I think it works pretty well. It's thumb size and has the word 'magic' on it--don't know about that--but it works. The other is black with just the word 'black' on it, and it stays black no matter what you're erasing.
- Sharpeners - not much to discuss here. You draw with pencils, at some point (ha) they get dull and need sharpening. I have a couple of the little plastic ones you turn to sharpen.
- X-Acto knife - this, BTW, is a brand name of Elmer Products, but 0f course, everyone calls them an X-Acto and wouldn't know exactly what you meant if you were to call it a utility knife or scalpel. Used for cutting and scraping, duh.
- Sandpaper - I have a small pad that's about 1 x 4 in/2.5 x 10.2 cm that's handy; another way to sharpen pencils, charcoal, or pastels
So that's my list of materials. I didn't get everything at one time, and you won't need to either. They sort of built up over four or five months time as I explored different things to draw with. What you want to do is pick one and go with it.
In the Studio
I am happy to tell you I finished my acrylic painting of the Grand Canyon scene and am very happy with it. I worked up the several greens needed for the pinion pines. I have several acrylic greens and used those for the different shades for highlights and shadows. The greens I used: viridian hue, olive green, and green gold. For some shades I mixed in (separately) cadmium yellow light,unbleached titanium, and titanium white. I'll post it on the Orbisplanis Online Art Gallery in the next few days, so check over there if you'd like to see how it turned out. Back to my "studio," such as it is, to contemplate my next project.
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Cheers!
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