I’m putting this here, filling out from twitter. Trip downtown in the gentle rain. Bought a bunch of small items. Sketchbooks were on sale at Omer De Serres, for instance. A big multimedia one for $6.00
I can’t resist. “Back to School,” is a good time for people who like art materials, pens, and sketchbooks. Also bought a thing called a Koi Waterbrush. This is a little bit more of a toy, but the Pentel Art Brush revolutionised my drawing. (and no, it’s not for brushing your pet Japanese carp!)
As you can see from this link, it’s a nylon brush that takes a hit of water in the barrel, and then you are supposed to paint with it. Haven’t quite tried that out. The barrel screws on left-handedly, which is odd.
What I’m worried about is leaving something filled with water inside my kit, to leak. Maybe it can stay with the bottle of watercolour water, and the little sprayer I use to moisten the colours in their tray. This goes along inside the kit bag, but gets sealed inside its own plastic bag, in case of leaks.
Once, I thought of trying to moisten all the colours before I went out on a walk. So, I sprayed them in the tray, and packed them up. Bad move, because the colours leaked out into the bottom of the bag, and were soaked up by a library book I had slipped in next to the tray.
Coincidentally, this was a book about watercolours, and one of the special effects the book designer used was a ring of soaked colour bleeding off the edge of each page. So, that disguised the colour I had managed myself to bleed into each page.
I returned the book, and was never fined for replacing a damaged book. As far as I know, it’s back on the shelves, no one the wiser.
Another worry I have about the Koi brush is that it comes with a separate little piece, a small plastic plug you are supposed to insert into the cartridge when taking the brush apart for storage. Unfortunately, this plug is easy to lose, and the brush has no place to store it (like with the cap, which snaps onto the base),
So you have to keep track of this plug, and not lose it. I’ve kept it the plastic bag the brush came in, and put that in my pencil case, with the plug inside. don’t know how this will work.
Anyways, for inspiration, I bought issue #1 of “Beasts of Burden” by Jill Thompson, written by Evan Dorkin. I love Thompson’s watercolour illos of animals.They’re pretty, but not overly sentimental, like a lot of children’s book illustration. That’s where I want to be, with my stuff.
