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HumpDay How-to: Label Your Drawing Pencils

I love to draw. And between in-person lessons, online lessons, and practice, I have gotten to the point that I’m not half-bad at it. That is, when I draw a bird it not only looks like a bird, but a specific species of bird, and the species I intended.

Red Crossbill. Carbon Pencil.

Lately, I’m even drawing freehand, without a grid, without tracing. Which, for me, is happying beyond belief.

Indian Skimmer. Carbon Pencil.

Anyway.

I have a set of Koh-I-Noor Woodless Graphite Pencils that I like to use much more than the traditional Derwent pencils. So I gave all my Derwents to my daughter and use only the Koh-I-Noors now. My only complaint about the Koh-I-Noors is that the print on them is so small and in a color that doesn’t contrast with the pencil itself. It was difficult and frustrating to try to see whether I had a 2B or a 8B in my hand.

Koh-I-Noor Pencils Before

I mentioned this aloud and said that I was going to write the number on a bit of masking tape and stick it on each pencil. But my daughter suggested using the label maker. So I tried it.

Koh-I-Noor Pencils After

I can certainly see which pencil is which now.

Now, the problem is that the label tape doesn’t stick to itself very well and the edge comes up a smidge. I’m going to use a tiny smear of PVA to seal it down. I expect that to do the trick. If not, I’ll update you.

Even better than these graphite pencils, however, I like my Royal Sovereign Wolff’s Carbon pencils, which I also labeled just for consistency’s sake. I like them because they have ‘wolf’ in the name, but also because I can achieve much darker darks with them than with the graphites. J. D. Hillberry mixes graphite, carbon, and charcoal, and if it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me. So I’m going to start trying it in order to get a full range of grayscale in my drawings.

Also, you might be interested in how I store and carry my pencils.

Pencil Roll Closed

My daughter made this pencil roll for me. I also have a red one for my colored pencils. If you visit her Etsy store, you can request she make a custom one for you in any color you like.

Pencil Roll Open

Written on February 22nd, 2012 , Art, How-To Tags: drawing, how-to, pencils

Five Minute Intervals

Always in a rush? Never have time for your art, whatever form your art takes?

It’s try that the creative person needs long stretches of isolation to do his or her best work, but that doesn’t mean you that can’t do anything at all with just five minutes. And it doesn’t have to be your best work. Just do something. Anything. Or not.

Here’s a list of possiblities:

Write something: a quick blog, a status update, a shopping list, a journal entry, a list of random ideas, a poem, a postcard to a friend, a love letter. If it’s Tuesday, try Five Minute Fiction.
Sketch something: your pet, child, or spouse, a book on the table, your own hand or foot, the view from the window. Read Robert Sloan’s advice on creating five-minute art. Or this article by Courtney Jordan.
Sing something: sing along with your favorite CD, or sing a capella a beloved song from childood, or a silly song, or a love song. Can’t sing? Hum,then. Or drum your hands on everything around you and listen to the different sounds. And maybe dance.
Got a bucket list (which you might share here or here)? Or a list of impossible things you’d like to do? Use 5 minutes to research information about one of the activities on your list. That’s the first step to getting it done.
Take a photograph of something: your pet, child, or spouse, a row of books, DVDs, brushes, or drawing implements, your cup of tea or coffee, your work in progress, the dead bug on your desk.
One of my Dead Bugs
Read something: a news article, the sports page, the comics, a couple poems or pages of a novel, a blog, a new recipe, an instruction manual.
Drink a glass of water. Staying hydrated is important.
Tidy your office or studio. This is something we all put off, since we’d much rather be in the process of creating something rather than putting away our toys. But it does need to be done sometimes, and it can prove cleansing or meditative. And I almost always find something I thought I’d lost (or forgot I had) when I tidy up. So it’s all good.
Stretch. Look out the window. Stand outside, if the weather is suitable. Take a deep breath. Stretch again in a different direction. Or two. Look around from that stretch position and see the world from a different angle.
Meditate. Sometimes the best action is no action.

Don’t like any of my ideas? Try these:

Things to do when you’re bored.

Five minutes in the kitchen.

Written on February 14th, 2012 , Art, Goals, How-To, Philosophy Tags: drawing, how-to, motivation, photography, writing

Humpday How-To: Adjusting the Easel Made Easier

Last year, I upgraded to a Mabef easel that was more stable than the tripod style easel I had been using, and I love it.

My Mabef Easel & my assistant Lucky

However, one of the features I most wanted – the complete adjustability – also turned out to be a bit troublesome. It stands up straight, or lays down flat, and holds any size support I may decide to work on. But I found it to be tricky to quickly and easily get both sides of the easel adjusted to the same levels every time I changed from one position to another.

So this week I broke down and used a Sharpie to add markings to the slots where the bolts slide up and down to make it adjustable. I had to overcome my reluctance to write on my ‘furniture,’ but I figured it has paint on it already, so I’m not really messing it up.

All I did was hold a ruler up to the slot and make 1″ marks along it. You can also see that I made a longer mark at my preferred upright position on both the upper support and the lower leg.

I made the marks on both left and right sides, always beginning at the top of the slot and working my way down so that both sides would be the same.

It was a quick and easy fix to a nuisance problem and I no longer dread adjusting the position of my easel.

Lower leg of easel with markings

Upper support of easel with markings

Written on February 8th, 2012 , Art, How-To Tags: how-to, painting

HumpDay How-To: Pastel Trays

This isn’t going to be pretty.

I built my pastel tray with no intent of ever displaying it to the world. I put function far above style. I basically needed something to hold all my oil pastels and I refused to pay the high prices for pastel trays that the art supply stores demand.

Formcore is cheap and sturdy, PVA glue is strong, and I already had plenty of both. So I built my own pastel trays.

My Pastel Trays

I built the longer, narrower one at the top of the picture first, then decided it wasn’t big enough, nor did it group my colors the way I liked, so I built the larger one. The same simple methods were used for both, so I’ll just describe the larger one.

You’ll need 2 sheets of foamcore. Mine happened to be 3/16” thick, but there’s no reason something a bit thinner or thicker wouldn’t work.

I also used PVA glue, which is what I keep on hand for bookbinding, but I imagine that almost any decent glue that works on paper should suffice.

First, I measured my pastel sticks. I have mostly Holbeins, but also some Cray-Pas and a lot of Sennelier. I added a little to the length of the longest sticks to give them wiggle room and decided 3 1/2” was a good height for each compartment. (Although when I measured them for this blog, they varied between 3 3/4” and 3 5/8”. Precision wasn’t my goal.)

Showing the Size of One Compartment

As for the width, I think I decided to just divide the piece of foamcore in half. I was more interested in the horizontal divisions. The center vertical was an afterthought.

Using a metal ruler and a mat knife, I cut one sheet of foamcore into long 1” strips. I cut the 4 horizontal dividers plus 2 top and bottom edges all the same length, to fit within the two long vertical side edges.

I drew on the uncut sheet of foamcore where each strip would be placed, based on my measurements, then one at a time I laid down a line of PVA glue and held the piece in place just long enough for it to hold.

Corner Detail of Tray

Once the glue dries – which for PVA is fairly quick, a couple hours is plenty long – I put my oil pastels into my preferred color groups. I have had no complaints at all about my foamcore trays. They’re sturdy, stackable, moveable, and I’ve even found them handy for holding binder clips and razor blades.

Razor Blades Stuck in Edge of Tray

In fact, I imagine that if I needed to transport my oil pastels someplace, I could put another sheet of foamcore (or a mat board) over the top, use large rubber bands to sandwich it all together, and take them with me. Or, I could build a custom fitting lid out of foamcore. I could even have my daughter sew me a custom totebag, exactly the right size, to carry the whole thing with a pad of colourfix paper.

That’s a good idea. I’ll have to get that ball rolling.

Written on January 25th, 2012 , Art, How-To Tags: crafting, creativity, how-to, oil pastels, pastels

Too-Short Pencils

In my colored pencil books, the advice was to Superglue a too-short pencil nub onto a fresh pencil, thereby lengthening it and getting to use more of the pencil before having to toss it out.

I didn’t like the idea of gluing it to another pencil, so I took some pieces of dowels I had leftover from another project and glued a too-short pencil onto one of those. But I didn’t have Superglue on hand. I had PVC, glue stick, paste, wood putty, and E-6000. I figured E-6000 was the strongest glue I had, so I tried it. I held the dowel to the pencil nub for a couple minutes, then braced it in a standing position.

After 10 minutes, it was still not set. I went away and came back in an hour. It came apart easily. Obviously, E-6000 wasn’t the right glue for the project.

Which still seems odd to me. I’d have thought that an industrial strength glue would certainly bond two pieces of wood together. But alas, no.

So when I went to Michael’s later on, I picked up a little tube of Superglue Gel, especially formulated for porous materials like wood. I held the pencil and the dowel together, then braced it upright. When I checked it after 15 minutes, it was set up solid. It even withstood the electric sharpener.

Pencil blued to Dowel with close-up

Using the Pencil

But when I had used the nub down to less than an inch and wanted to detach it before I ended up running the glue through the sharpener, I worried I might not be able to separate the two pieces without a saw. But to my surprise, they snapped apart fairly easily, with just pressure from my bare hands.

I’ve Superglued several too-short pencils to dowels now and haven’t had any problem with any of them.

Written on January 10th, 2012 , Art, How-To Tags: colored pencils, how-to, pencils

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