Traditional Toolkit!

Better make this one as quickly as I humanly can, it's really late here...

This past week as been nothing but dog walks, tidying up and laughing at Britney's head. But I've been wanting to do this for a long time now.

Well, I have to come down to this and say that in recent times I've become such a traditionalist. It was only when I realised that I had LOADS of watercolour paint left anf I thought, why not use it?

So I pulled out my camera and took a few shots. I must warn that this will be an image heavy post, so dial-up users brace yourselves!

Well, here's most of it. Markers, paints, pencils and all other bits and pieces are kept here.

The rest is kept in here - oil paints, Karisma pencils, a couple of pallettes and a box of spare Copic markers.
Here's where I keep all my sketchbooks and pads. I tend to buy a lot of them over time, and I get though them so quickly drawing all kinds of crap in. I usually get either A4 or A5, but I happen to like 10x7 inch ones best now. Just the right size.

Paint, masking fluid, a Nutella jar used as a water jar, and white ink. I have black ink as well which isn't shown here. The pallete below is the latest addition to the toolkit. Personally I don't really like tubes that much, so I decided to use the paint in "pan" style...

Pens, pencils and erasers are kept in this little tin. This could do with sorting out big time, since I shoved all kinds of pens in there, however old and worn out they are. You can also see a few plastic rulars and a cutting mat, which is obviously more durable than cardboard.

Brushes now, and as with the pens, I keep an assortment - meaning old and worn to brand spanking new ones. I use old ones to mix paint and apply masking fluid on.

These are Faber Castell Polychromos pencils, and in the tin are gouache paints. I hardly ever use the gouaches, and I've barely touched the pencils in forever. They're such a bitch to sharpen, now I remember why I sharpened them with a knife rather than a sharpener!

I just LOVE these - Copic markers. I've used these for about a year now and they're perhaps one of the best types of traditional tool I've ever used! Shame they're so expensive and hard to get hold of! I have to take a train ride to one shop I know that sells them. There's also one Kurecolor too which I used to be able to get locally. They can be just as good as Copic, but not many colours are available.

Now here's all the random crap I keep. I really should get rid of some of this, since I don't even use it. It just ranges from crappy old oil pastels [oil pastels a few of my artistic mortal enemies along with charcoal] and a toy water pistol.

And here's the rest - curve rulers, sharpeners, knifes, scissors, adhesives and the rest of the bunch are kept in here.

Of course, just because I have tons of art materials there it doesn't mean I've stopped using Photoshop! That's one of my more important tools for when I need to do stuff like colour adjusting, colouring, inking and cleaning.