New Materials

I love the little bursts of inspiration and motivation that come with the purchase of new art supplies. This week I bought a new set of pencils and gouache paints and a tiny paintbrush and they're pretty much all I want to play with right now.

Some friends of mine got married at the start of the year and asked me to write out their vows for them and turn them into something fun (obviously the brief for this project was very broad!) and I thought I'd treat myself to some new materials for the occasion. I'm not far from finishing it and then posting it off to them - I might share some pictures of the final product.



It has been really lovely to work with a fun, messy, tactile, sensory medium. Even the smell of the paint and pencils makes me want to make things. Creating exclusively on my computer isn't always very inspiring, albeit less messy.



The pencils I bought are Koh-I-Noor Progressos (a brand I'd never heard of) which are woodless. I tried them out at my local bookshop (it has an upstairs section dedicated to art supplies) and the pigments were so bright and applied really well. I have an old set of Derwents that look really dull on paper and the texture is kind of waxy. I asked the lady at the store if she knew whether or not pencils could fade with age or if the conditions they're kept in affected them and she looked at me like "lady, you have had way too much time to think about your pencils".



The paints are just a cheap Reeves gouache set. Gouaches have such great pigment and coverage and a little goes a long way. I eyed off the fancy $7 a tube gouache paints, but decided that a whole set for just under double that price was a lot more reasonable.


+ A page from the baby journal I've been working on.

Have you acquired any fun new materials of late?