i've tidied up my desk and switched up to my medium intuos from the small. the small one was too small, i found, because the drawing surface on the tablet represents the whole screen (so you can use the pen as a mouse as well as a drawing implement)....so, because my screen isn't super big anyway, and the image takes up maybe 2/3 of the screen, the amount of tablet space I have to work with is very small. also, I'm right handed and I found that it was difficult to work on parts of the image towards the right - especially the lower right. It felt really cramped. I think it's because I didn't have much space. I cleared a space just big enough for the tablet, but as I worked towards the right of the image, things got really cramped. Like, say if I'm working on part of the image at the far bottom right, I need to have some space to rest my hand on the desk, not on the tablet (because the nib of the pen is near the bottom right of the tablet) and I didn't have that. but I don't think it's just an issue of desk-space. I had heard that - just as a general piece of advice - it's better not to use the small size tablet at all, because it forces your hand into a cramped position that makes it difficult to draw and can strain your muscles...I don't know....I only know that I heard that after getting my small intuos, and that's why I bought a medium size one soon after /// then, with all my great equipment, I....didn't do anything and ended up putting my drawing tablet away all together, because the dual challenge of learning art and learning the tablet was too daunting, as I was writing about in my last post. but yes - when I was actually using the small one, I did have problems working towards the right, especially bottom right.
anyway, now I have my medium intuos with space around it, and I also cleared away a lot of the stuff I had on my desk and the shelf above my desk, and I put my 7 pencil cups in that space, so I can take a lot of my pencils, pens, etc out of my draw and have them ready to use where I can see them.
this is probably a very boring blog post. I'm just taking it easy today. I finished a work project yesterday and I'm starting another one...today or tomorrow.
so, for now I'm just doing some writing and working on some pics with fire alpaca and sorting out my art supplies. These are my main supplies (besides the digital art stuff which I've already written about):
- a set of Jasart coloured pencils. these are kind of mid range - a bit more expensive than the basic ones, but cheaper than a lot of the other artist quality ones. They're pretty good, I find.
- a set of Derwent artists' pencils. These are pretty good quality and quite expensive.
- a set of 48 prismacolor premier coloured pencils. I bought these because I heard that they're really good and I was interested to see whether they would actually be better than the Derwent pencils. I had my doubts that they would be because I just thought...well, how can you improve a coloured pencil? But I did notice a big difference and I would definitely say the prismacolours are better. A big part of their secret is that they're wax based, so they're really smooth and soft. You can apply them thickly and make really vibrant, bold lines and shapes, or lightly shade and the result is nice and evenly textured. I've since heard that the Faber-Castell Polychromos Colour Pencils are even better than prismacolor, at least according to some people, so I'm keen to try those at some stage, but I'll probably wait a while because they're expensive. What will be interesting is that the Polychromos are harder because they are oil based, so it will be interesting to see what they bring to the table because it won't be what the prismacolors bring. Apparently they're both really good at layering and mixing, which is interesting and intriguing because I would have thought that the hardness would have diminished that quality. I think where the Faber-Castells are going to have the advantage is drawing fine details. To be honest, as someone who is still learning about art, I had always associated Faber-Castell with the kind of cheap coloured pencils that mostly kids use. That doesn't prejudice me against them \\\ I'm not averse to using cheap art supplies...it just means that I wouldn't put them in the same class as artist quality pencils, but apparently they cover that niche very well.
- an interesting point about prismacolor vs polychromos is that it's prismacolor and the polychromos are colour pencils ||| so it's USA vs UK.
- A lot of the rest of the supplies on this list illustrate my point about not being averse to cheap art supplies, although there are one or two pens that were on the more expensive side. I'm not a big fan of cheap ball point pens. I love pens that make a thick (but not too thick, like a marker) bold line and flow very smoothly but don't blotch.
- Also on the topic of price, I never really got into copic markers - partly because I get the impression that you have to be good at art to use them, but also because of how expensive they are...just not something that's worth it for me. maybe one day.
- Some of the cheaper stuff I've got includes:
- A set of watercolour pencils from 'The Craft Stall'
- 20 Faber Castell connector pens (this is an example of what I mean about thinking Faber Castell just makes cheap stuff, coz it seems like whenever you see coloured pencils and other art supplies at shops like K Mart and Big W, Faber Castell is one of the main brands).
- A set of 29 Fine Line 0.8 mm coloured markers....I just realised that there are about 3 or 4 actual good quality, proper artist's fineliners mixed in with the others. I think the others came in a pack and they were quite cheap. One indicator of that is that there's no brand name on them - just: FINE LINE MARKER 0.8mm. This, to me, is a good example of cheap art materials being pretty good. I'm not an expert or professional artist - maybe not even a real artist at all - but I really like these fine liners, and I was a little disappointed by the professional ones. I suppose it was to do with expectations. Like, when you pay the same amount for 3 or 4 markers as you pay for 25 of another brand, you expect a bid difference in quality. Like, when I bought the good ones (from an art supplies shop) I took them home and I thought, these are gonna be the bomb, and they didn't really impress me that much. I think it's because I'm not a fine-liner kind of person. As I said earlier, I like a fairly thick, bold line. Proper fineliner's are too fine. That's probably why I like the cheap ones - the lines are pretty strong /// which probably makes them not good fineliners, but makes me like them. I don't even really use them anyway, to be honest.
- a set of 9 different coloured sharpies
- 12 different coloured twist crayons. I like twist crayons coz of how simple they are...no sharpening, no real nuance or variation in texture - just crayon
- next cup has 3 different cheap things in it:
- 8 lead pencils
- 3 mechanical pencils
- 8 different coloured ball point pens (with really weird colours like pink and orange, as well as more normal ones like black and green). These didn't work that well when I first got them, so I didn't use them that much, but I tested them just now and they work OK. They don't flow very smoothly though - that's the problem. You have to scribble a bit to get it flowing, so you wouldn't want to be relying on a line to appear when you draw or write with it.
- a cup with 17 good drawing/ writing pens/ fine-liners. I really like good pens ||| like I said: bold line with smooth flow.
- 6 different coloured stabilo boss highlighters. I think there were more originally. are these expensive? I can't remember ⇉ all I know is that, after using others, this is the only brand I will use.
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