“Beat Holder”
As I’ve been writing lately about the art supplies I buy I’ve also been thinking about the art supplies I’ve abandoned. I like to try out new supplies but that doesn’t mean that I like everything that I try out. Sometimes I use things a few times, never figure out what I want to do with them, and then they sit unused for years. That’s generally what happened to the things on this list. I think I’m going to give them away to some students.
Shin Han 60 Marker Set. Back in 2011 I decided that I wanted to work in marker again. I had worked in marker way back in the 1980s during my college years but hadn’t done much with them since the early 1990s. I wanted to come up with a finished technique with markers and not just sketches. As a result I ended up buying this 60 marker set.
At the time Copic markers were the king of the marker world but these Shin Han markers were cheaper. I was also told that they were good and they were Korean markers that were used all over the animation industry in Korea. I bought the set on sale for around $100. At about $2 a marker that was super cheap.
I ended up using these for a while and developing a finished style with them but they had two flaws for me. They didn’t have a brush tip, which it turns out that I much prefer to the bullet or chisel tip that these have, nor did they have refills available for them. I fairly quickly stopped using these and started buying Copic brush markers and refills.
Shin Han 14 Wood Marker Set. This was a set that I bought because they were dirt cheap. Shin Han markers were a bit of a flop in the USA and the online stores that I saw selling them were discontinuing the line. By this point I had stopped using my Shin Han markers but at around $15 for this set I bought it anyway. It’s sat unused since about 2012. I made swatches of the markers but that’s about it.
Shin Han 23 Blue Markers. I totally forgot about these markers until I just started looking at my Shin Han swatches to see the dates on them. Before I bought the set of 60 markers I tried out some individual ones. I decided to buy a bunch of blue markers to concentrate on one color and figure out a technique. I probably paid around $2 a marker for these. I did figure out a technique and then bought the set to expand on it. I have no idea where these markers are right now but they’re somewhere around here in a marker wallet case.
Rembrandt Set of 15 Pastels. I can’t remember when I bought these but it was a least 12 years ago. I never worked in pastels and wanted to try out a new medium. These are really nice soft pastels and I made a few of drawings with them but didn’t take to them. One of the reasons I didn’t like them is that pastels are a lot messier than I expected. I hear people say that oils painting is messy but I found pastels to be way messier. Pastels are made of fine powder and they leave fine colored dust everywhere whenever I used them. I found that too annoying.
Set of 12 Pan Pastels. About five years after trying the pastels then came out with pan pastels so I bought some. These are pastels that aren’t in stick form but are like compressed powder in a flat little pan. You rub this small rubber soap/thing into the pastel pan and then rub it on the paper. It’s was really weird to me and seemed a bit like doing makeup. I didn’t like the whole rubbing color on paper aspect of it and quickly abandoned the pan pastels. I don’t think I ever even finished a drawing with them.
Le Pen Set of 8 Drawing Pens. I bought these just this year. I think they were cheap. Maybe around $10. The pens ranged in size from around 1.0mm to .01mm. I ended up liking the .8mm one so I then went and bought a box of them. I almost never like nor use the pens on the smaller end of the scale so there is really no use in me keeping them around. I got what I wanted out of the set, which was to test them out and see if I liked one of them, so now there is no use in me keeping the whole set.
Set of 24 Pans of Gouache. This is another one I bought just this year. I think I bought it just out of curiosity. One of my favorite sets of gouache is a cheap pan set of Pelikan gouache paints that I bought back in the 1990s and have replaced and used over the years. I saw this set (which I can’t find a brand name on) while shopping online for art supplies and decided to get it. It was also cheap and reminded m of the Pelikan set. I wanted to see how similar it was.
The unbranded set turned out to be fairly similar to the Pelikan one but I don’t like the box/case that it comes in nearly as much. I think I just looked at the set and then put it aside. I never even swatched it. It’s been sitting there unused all this year.
Various French Curves. This is the last thing on this list that I can think of at this moment. I learned about 20 years ago that good new French curves are hard to find. My French curves needed replacing so I went and got a new set. That new set was terrible. I thought they were defective but it turns out that all the crimes were bad. The edges of them weren’t very smooth. I couldn’t get a smooth curve with them. It’s like they were made on old worn out machines and nobody cared.
As a result of not being able to easily replace my old French curves I had to buy a bunch of them whenever I saw them. I bought a few different set from a few different brands over the years. I slowly found three or four of them that I liked but I also had a bunch of them left over. I threw away the really terrible ones but kept the ones that were good but just not the sizes I liked. They’re still kicking around.
So that’s my list of art supplies that I’ve got hanging around the studio that are never going to get used by me. Hopefully some of my students can get some use out of them.