Author: Deer Me

Schmincke Horadam Aquarell Eight Half-Pan Metal Pallet with Water Container

Deer Me

I might have a problem with watercolor pallets. I want to find one that’s perfect, that has everything I want, and nothing I don’t. That means I have a lot of pallets. Most recent is a little metal one from Schmincke. There’s at least three companies out there making the same pallet, Schmincke is just one, Whiskey Painter’s and Field Artist are the other two. The Schmincke is the most expensive one, but it’s also the only one to come with eight artist-grade half pans. Not bad for around twenty bucks more. It still comes out at less than a hundred which is my personal spend-on-art-supplies ceiling.

Things I like:

  • Has a ring on the bottom, which is important because when I grip something too firmly, queue the tremors
  • Has a built in water flask; don’t need a bottle or a water-brush (which I’m not a fan of)
  • Has an attached water cup; don’t gotta bring one along
  • Small enough to fit in anything
  • Sturdy enough to not need to be inside something
  • Only two mixing areas

Alright, so every other review out there is gonna say “ew gross! only two mixing wells!”. I get it, more wells, more mixing, more colors, whatever. I work small, five by seven inches and five by seven inches only and forever, amen. I like having just two, more than that is hard to stay focused. Mix a color, paint everything that’s gonna be that color, move on. Add a brush load of something more to one and glaze it over something that’s mostly dried. Two wells is good. Some dig the limited color pallet, I dig that, and the limited mixing pallet.

I don’t really love that I can’t fit any brush I like in the pallet. I mean, you can fit one of those tiny, super-short handle brushes (like the stubby Winsor & Newton ones that come with their smallest pallets) and maybe some ultra-tiny retractable brush. No normal travel brush is gonna fit. Not a Da Vinci four, not an Escoda Versitil four, certainly not the six or eight rounds I prefer. Oh well.

I should mention the matte enamel mixing wells don’t need breaking in. The flash doesn’t leak. It’s best to pour out of the flask not by shaking it but just a little squeeze to the pallet, the metals thin enough to flex a bit and that overcomes the air pressure that keeps the water from flowing out the little hole nice and smooth. I’m very happy with it.

Haven’t tried the paints that came with it yet, it’s got the eight from that Altoids tin Sennelier in it now. Gonna try and use those up.

Inktober Auto

Deer Me

I hate autos. I hate seeing them. I hate hearing them. I hat driving them and knowing they are being driven. Trucks are just as bad, vans almost as, buses are tolerable, but still awful. Here’s some car crash I tried to draw.

Ink-motha-fuckin-tober

Deer Me

So I guess there’s this think called inktober or ink-tober or something all about doing ink stuff in the month of October. Imma do that, ink’s great and I got my Indigraph pen from that kickstarter. If you like india ink (or acrylic ink) but are super bad about not spilling ink or just don’t care for dip pens, buy an Indigraph. They’re straight up selling them now and I love it.

Anyway, ink. Search for stock-photo portraits of people online and draw them. That’s surprisingly satisfying. Here’s some guy I drew (and scanned with Notebloc, which I love).

In real life it’s five by seven which is a perfect size.

Days 67 – 101

Deer Me

So here’s days 67 through to 101 of taking 15 minutes or so to draw my left hand. If you’re clever you can tell what day’s I took the stuff for that benign tremor.  Maybe not though, if I hold the pencil loose enough it’s not that bad anyway. Starting on day 80 I went in with a pencil just cause I wanted to sort of get a process down. Pencil, then ink, then count. 1, 2, 3. Always 3. Speaking of which, hands are a 3 now, funny how that works out.

Also starting with 80 I used a dollar fifty 3.5 by 5 inch craft paper cover notebook. I really like that size. It’s a nice size. And they’re thin so I can clip then to a table and not have to worry about not having anything to steady it all. As of 101 I’m not quite halfway through the second little book. 101 and maybe 10 minutes a pice that’s a double just drawing a left hand. 16 hours. Not all that long really.

Only Two

Deer Me

There’s only 3 things, obviously, PLACES, THINGS, and EVENTS, but for art there’s only two. What are those two? Amateur and professional? Historic and contemporary? Good and bad? No, it’s much simpler than any of that, there’s art that’s art and art that’s a commodity. The Snail (Matisse, 1953) is a commodity. It’s not a commodity ’cause anyone would have picked it up in a yard sale, not because it’s inherently valuable-even as a pretty thing to look at-which it isn’t-just because Matisse made it. A caricature from some anonymous busker on the boardwalk is a commodity too, not because of who made it but because of who wants it.

It’s not that different with pickled sharks. Only no mater what someone, a specific someone paid for that caricature, and it’s going to be recognizable as what it is as long as it’s subject exists in living memory. After that it’s going to stop being a commodity, and it might end up in the paper recycling. But then, it might not. Once it’s done being a commodity it’s still going to be art. Every single living human could die, and gods or aliens or robot archeologists could uncover that cartoonish doodle and they’d know it as art. They’d see work that’s representative but not realistic and art would be art. They’d see a toilet as a toilet, a badly preserved shark as a poorly prepared scientific specimen (if it lasted-it wont ’cause it’s very badly done) and a jumble of paper glued to a canvas as an accident.

So don’t think you gotta be poor to be an artist, don’t think you can’t sell or even sell out. Just try and make sure you make something that’s going to stay art.