Art Supplies on Display
As of this writing I am waiting on a big order of new art supplies. The first week of May is ending and I am setting myself up for the summer. That’s how I do things. At least that how I sometimes do things.
Going into the summer of 2021 I decided that it was going to be a summer of painting for me. I bought half a dozen 24×36 inch canvases and painted on them. It was the first time I had painted in a couple of years and I had a good time painting them.
Last year I didn’t paint at all. At least not on those big canvases. At the beginning of 2022 I started my Great Gatsby project. I began doing a whole bunch of illustrations for the now public domain book. Despite having gotten a lot of work done on the Gatsby project I’m still working on it. I’m just not wholly satisfied with it yet.
Earlier in the year I started working on spot illustrations for the Gatsby book. Those are small illustrations usually of a single object or some such. I made some drawings of wine glasses and geometric shapes and then an idea popped into my head. I should do these as big paintings.
So far all of my Gatsby illustration have been digital or on paper. Making some on 24×36 inch canvases changes the game. I have to figure out how to present them. I could take digital photos and crop out everything around them but maybe I want people to see their size and context. Maybe they’d look better if you can see them on an easel. I’ll have to figure that all out.
Last year I even stocked up on some new paints. Since I has used a lot of my paint during the summer of 2021 I figured I’d better get some new paint. Then I never used any of it in 2022. At this moment I’m not even sure what paint I bought. I’m going to have to take stock before I start these new paintings.
My big order of art supplies doesn’t even include any new acrylic paint. Often when I’m thinking of ordering new supplies I add things to my online cart over time. It may take me a month to finally make the order. With this order I didn’t even add the canvases in until a couple of weeks after I started looking for things. That’s when the idea hit me.
A lot of the order in the beginning was a bunch of markers. I already have a ton of markers but these ones are a new brand and they were cheaper than my usual Copic markers. They are about half the price. Plus they had refills ink. I’ve complained about the bottles of Copic refill ink getting smaller so I’ve been looking for alternatives. This is one of the alternatives. But even at $3.19 a marker and $3.69 a bootle of ink the price still adds up quickly as I add more and more markers to my cart.
Another basic thing that isn’t in this order is paper. I normally use 9×12 inch and 11×17 inch Bristol board. I have plenty of 9×12 inch paper, about 8 pads of it, but I think I might only have a couple of pads of 11×17 inch Bristol. I know I bought a new brand of 11×17 inch Bristol last time but I thought I had more besides that. I still might if I dig through my pads but at a glance I didn’t see the extra paper.
I really should have checked my paper stock but I wasn’t in the mood to order more paper. Besides even with just what is left in those two pads plus a few other sheets that I know I have lying around I have enough paper for a couple of months. I can always get more another time.
One of the things that I like to do when making these big orders (this one was $350 by the way) is to look around the sale section to see if I can find any cheap and interesting items to add to my order. Usually I find some black markers, cheap watercolor paint sets, or sample paper to throw in. This time I even spent $12 on a tiny little desktop vacuum to clean up little eraser leavings. Talk about something I don’t really need. But it looked kind of neat. So I ordered it.
One thing that I had to order that I thought I had more of but didn’t were these little black “LePen” markers. I remember getting color LePen markers from the stationary store back in my High School days but only recently have I rediscovered their black art markers. I sampled one, really liked it, and thought I bought more of them. But it turns out that the “more” of them that I bought was only one pen. At least that’s all that I can find among my black drawing pen collection. Maybe I did buy more and they’re stashed away somewhere only to be found after the new ones arrive but I can’t count on that.
I have a new pan set of Lukas watercolor gouache coming. I ordered it because it looks just like the set of Pelican gouache that I have and I’m curious to see if it’s the same set under a different brand name. Plus it was cheap, only $12, and I’m always up for a new pan set of paints. I’ve been buying pan sets of watercolor this year and besides the Lukas one I think I have another small set coming too.
At this point in time I’m not even sure of everything that’s in this big order that I made. I could always look it up on the website but I don’t think I want to. I’m going to make an unboxing video when the art supplies finally arrive and I think I want to be surprised by a couple of things. That’s why I like to throw those little on sale extras in there. After I get everything I’ll post the unboxing video here.