Materials

A collection of 29 posts

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New Crayons (Part 2)

The Haul I recently picked up some new art supplies and I can't wait to show you. New Crayons! What could be better? One gem is this Kuretake gansai tambi Art Nouveau set. I've had the 36 color set for years – it was one of the

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New Crayons (Part 1)

Even though I wasn't a particularly artsy kid, the magic of a new box of crayons did not evade me. Perhaps that's why I wasn't that artsy: they looked so pretty all new and in a row that I didn't want to

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For you: Spring Reference Pics

So many times I have sat down to sketch and ended up using my time searching through my phone or royalty-free photo archives (like pexels or unsplash) just looking for something to paint. There can be some value to this process – really asking ourselves what we are interested in, the

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The flowers are here

The flowers are here! So I will be out painting them, sneezing and alive. Spring sun breaks are the perfect time to get outside and paint: they don't last long, and the light is magic. I've been continuing my project of using up my sketchbooks, and

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April 2024: Use your supplies (up)

If I could offer one piece of creative practice advice it would be this: Use your supplies. Think of them as experiences – like a concert ticket or a birthday cake – not a collection of treasures. We're never meant to keep them. Plus, they don't last forever

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Drawing Sticks & Value

Last month I shared two posts about becoming acquainted with a new material, in my case: oil pastels (here and here). If the new material is any kind of drawing stick – a dry material that comes in distinct colors that are not easily mixed – it's important to get

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Something new - oil pastels, pt 2: Techniques

Welcome to part 2 of our series on getting to know a medium that is new to you. If you missed it, part 1 is here, where I introduced my process of trying oil pastels as a total newbie, and how I go about selecting, researching and becoming acquainted with

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February 2024: Trying something new - oil pastels, part 1

Meet my new obsession: oil pastels. They are quick and opaque. They are vibrant and smudgy and all around lush. Over the past decade I've been slowly adding mediums to my collection. I started with watercolors, brush markers and fine liners pens. Later I added in gouache, colored

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23 other sketchbooks

One of the things that lowers my barrier to sitting down to paint often is having one sketchbook for everything, though, it's really two for me: I have my Midori MD (I use the cotton line now, but also love the regular ones) and an Etchr watercolor sketchbook.

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December 2022: Finding new shapes

Artists always need shapes, but sometimes finding new and interesting ones can be harder than it seems. Big blobby shapes that look sort of like boulders are always the first thing to come out of my hand, so if I want to incorporate other shapes into my markmaking play I

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Back to school supplies

What's better than a fresh box of crayons? Not much. If painting is my practice, buying art supplies is my hobby. And since it can get expensive fast, it's usually worth it to go back and revisit the treasures I've already collected and dig

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Art chat

Today I have some creative miscellany for you, the kinds of things that I might go on about if we were getting coffee, chatting and showing each other our sketchbooks. So grab a cup of something nice and let's go! Painted backgrounds Earlier this month I had an

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Zorn Palette

In this month's main post I introduced one of my favorite limited palettes: the Zorn Palette, which is made of a bright warm red (often cadmium red, but I'm using pyrrol red here), yellow ochre and black. You can click here if you want to read

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Canvas tests - EDI Live follow up

Here are a few follow up pics from the tests I did during the live: Here's the acrylic (dark blue) and gouache (hot pink) on unstretched canvas. It definitely warped. The gouache looks pretty amazing IRL, though part of it is this brilliant pink color which is unfortunately

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Lightfastness Testing

It's spring, which means more light up here in the north so it's a good time to set up lightfastness tests. It's something I've been wanting to do for ages. Want to see the process? Let's go! Lightfastness is a

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April 2023: Materials play

A key to creative energy is the willingness to use your supplies. Use them freely, use them on things that don't work out, waste them, use them up. As much I know this, I still feel resistance from the part of me that wants to collect art supplies

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Water Control

In our January Live class I showed strategies for water control when using watercolor and wanted to share some of those ideas and practice strategies with you all here. I will demonstrate another round of examples in our February EDI Live this weekend! Watercolor is surprising and unpredictable – this is

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Swatching Oils

Today's post is a quick one. I want to show you some swatching I've done recently as I've been trying out some new paints. I started on a set of large commissions last year and was several weeks of work into it when the

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Making creative space

It was a little over two years into my increasingly regular art practice that I, for the first time, quit a job because I hated it. Until then I was the kind of person who stayed everywhere as long as possible. Now, I had become someone who might leave because

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Mixing your media

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Everyday Objects + Art

This month I wanted to show you some of the objects I keep in my art area that weren’t designed as art supplies. These are the little hacks and repurposed objects that make my space work well and feel like mine. Timer My friend gave me this hourglass for

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Acrylics: types & brands! And a video!

Hi! Here's a two-part follow up to this week's first post. Up first is a bit on the 3 types of acrylics with my personal preferences for each. Then, I've got a 12 minute video demonstrating the different types of paint and how they

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Acrylic Paints: A beginning

Somehow we've made it all the way to May without me writing about acrylics, which is amazing since I love them and use them so much. What are acrylics? Acrylics are super versatile – they come in many consistencies, and can mimic the other types of paints (oil, watercolor,

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DRAWING STICKS: my story of pens, pencils, markers, crayons and pastels

As a kid, I started out making marks with crayons and markers, pens and pencils (we'll just call this group of things drawing sticks for simplicity). My familiarity with the handfeel of these tools made them a really attractive starting point when I revisited mark-making as an adult,

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April 2022: One thing at a time

One thing that makes art-making a satisfying experience for me is exploring one(ish) thing at a time. When I was just beginning, trying to paint a realistic portrait was not very satisfying because it asked me to attend to a lot things I wasn't skilled at -