My year in art materials
Letter nr. 3
Every few months I, mostly unintentionally, choose a different medium to draw with. And every time I do that, I think I've discovered my ultimate favourite one. That's exactly how I feel about wax pastels right now. Is that a common struggle for illustrators?
For me, coloured pencils are my only constant. They give final touches to my watercolour pieces, colour to my ink line art and sometimes they perform solo. At the moment, they accompany water-soluble wax pastels in parts for which the pastel sticks are too thick for.
If coloured pencils are my only constant, what is changing? I thought it would be an interesting way to reflect on how my year looked like if I narrated it through the art tools I used in my drawings!
Nib pen
First months of 2023 were busy with figuring out how to use nib pen and ink. My main struggle was to create lighter lines (not in colour but in thickness!) so it would merge into the background more. Here are two personal drawings, coloured with watercolours:
Watercolours
In spring, as I started working on picture book Pobegla Radirka, I drew with my good old friends: watercolours. In my early days of illustrating, watercolours were my number one, so I like to revisit them, keep the dust off of the paint cubes and stay loyal, haha!
Gouache
In spring (I think?) I discovered Good Ship Illustration, a brilliant group of 3 illustrators who created a very educative video about colour theory and complementary colours. I thought I will finally master the colours if I follow along the instructions and I ended up drawing these blobs of colour in the video below. I’ve learnt quite a bit but I haven’t explored the colour theory any deeper … I did paint with gouache, though, which I rarely use. It was fun, but short-lived.
Ink pen & oil pastels
In summer, as I was thinking of new artworks to make for a group exhibition at Nucleus Portland Gallery, I decided to draw with ink pen, in same style I did for last year’s exhibition. So yet again, I spent hours and hours drawing just with ink pen (free-hand style), a bit of graphite pencil and oil pastels, which I discovered in the late spring and was still very hyped about including them in everything!
Wax pastels
It seems like I’m finishing the year with yet another media – water-soluble wax pastels. I don’t mix them with water (yet!) but I really like the smooth texture and how well they mix together. As I’m running out of days to add more art materials to my list, I think with the wax pastels I’m wrapping this year up!
How did your year look like in art materials? Was it diverse?
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Cheers! - Mojca
I would love to try Wax pastels as well gouache paint this year I try colored pencils with watercolor I like the texture of colored pencils .. 💕
What a great way to recount your year! I'm not a friend of any wet medium. I stink when I work with watercolour! My art tool year could be summarised in: acrylic markers (posca, molotow), thick graphite (9B), indigo blue Polychromos on graph paper (my year's favourite!), colour pencils, and dip pen. Oh, and fountain pen!