Pop Goes the Artist!

The calligraphy piece from the last post was delivered to the client a few days ago; apparently she was thrilled with it, although unfortunately I wasn’t able to give it to her in person.  The money it made for me is sitting in my bank account as I type this and now I’m trying to figure out how best to celebrate with it.  (In the future I’ll do responsible things like save it, but right now, for my first sale, I feel like I should celebrate with a Dick Blick spending spree or something, to reward myself.)  I already have a wishlist on Dick Blick, but I also have my eyes on some Daniel Smith block-printing inks, since they’re supposed to be faaaaar superior to Speedball (and are comparably priced, huzzah.)

So…on one hand, I feel like I should use most of the money to buy the easel that I want for my dorm next year.  But I wouldn’t be using that until September–talk about a delayed celebration.  I’ve been wanting new pastels (in a real brand) for a looong time, so I think I will get some of them, but I do I want the Rembrandts (set of 60 half sticks) or the Nupastels (set of 60) first?  I can’t afford them both at once, but I do think that I want both eventually.  (Pastels, unlike paints, are one of those materials where the more colors you have, the easier your job will be.)  And if I get some pastels, then I think I want to get some Colourfix paper to play with–and that just so happens to be on sale until, um, today.

Then again, I also really want to learn colored pencils (set of 36), for which I’d also want to buy some Stonehenge paper, but I’m not sure if I want to learn a new medium this summer–or at all.  Perhaps I should just focus my colored drawing desires on pastels, which I love and have a solid working knowledge of?  I’d really like to try colored pencils for portrait work and because they’d be a clean, contained, and COLORED alternative to pencil drawing at school.  But now that I think I’ll be getting an easel, do I need that?  I don’t know.  So I suppose I’ll wait on the colored pencils.

Ok.  I think I’ve decided.  Rembrandt half-sticks and Colourfix.  I even have a project in mind already (this photo of Muckross Abbey from Ireland just screams for pastels).  This is exciting.

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In other news, I went out yesterday and spent an hour or so sketching the Basilica, which only proved to me why I need to spend a lot more time just sketching.  Today I went to the National Gallery for a bit, which was fun as well.

Yes, that pun is definitely too awful to be allowed.  But it’s my blog and I’ll pun if I want to.

Anyway, next year (my sophomore year) I’ll be living in a single–no roommate.  I haven’t actually seen the room yet, but that hasn’t stopped me from trying out furniture arrangements in my head.  It dawned on me the other day, though, that if I do things right and squish a little bit, I could probably fit an easel in my room, enabling me to paint whenever I want (well, more or less).  And with about three seconds and the Dick Blick catalog, I found the easel I want.  It’s reasonably priced, looks fairly steady, and folds flat–sounds like a dorm room winner to me.

Of course, the real space-eater when it comes to art isn’t the easel so much as the materials, the canvases, the sketchbooks, the still life set-ups, etc.  But I’m confident that I can keep that under control or else just learn to tolerate it, because being able to paint at school would be heaven on earth.  Huzzah!

In other news, I’ve sketched out an 8×10″ line drawing of my next Lucy painting (from a sweet photo that my brother took).  I hope to get it transferred to canvas and at least begun over Easter break, but since I have two other projects (calligraphy and math) and a mere five days off, that may or  may not actually happen.  We’ll see.  If I don’t get to it over Easter, summer vacation is only a month away.  Either way, I’m thinking it’ll be the same size as the Red Lucy (20×24″), but orientated portrait-wise, rather than landscape.  And perhaps a nice green background to contrast with that bit of red in her collar and the warm tones in her fur.  Should be fun, and perhaps I can induce myself to try and sell this one.