Rescuing my most hated art supplies and being blown away 😱

28 Jun

Rescuing my most hated art supplies and being blown away 😱

A few months after I started painting in 2018, I realised I didn’t like at all two of my art supplies: CELLULOSE PAPER and WATER BRUSHES.

The water brush didn’t allow me to control the water flow on the page, I used to press the water barrel a lot so too much water flowed on the page and I run out of water frequently.

On the other hand, on the cellulose paper, the paint dried very quickly, the colors didn’t stand out specially and there were weird textures that I didn’t like at all.

So I put both of these art supplies in a drawer and almost forgot about them 🙃

However I still felt a bit disappointed, because, I had seen Alicia Aradilla (@a.aradilla) use cellulose sketchbooks (these ones) and getting such an awesome result!

Anyway I thought maybe I could revisit them later, but at that time, I had started to practice with cotton paper and

O - M - G

the colors on this kind paper stood out so much, they were much more brilliant and full of light, you could appreciate the different nuances depending on how much water you used! At the time I learnt how to paint gradients and it was absolutely fascinating.

During the years I sporadically tried different brands of water brushes and cellulose paper sketchbooks but they never convinced me yet.

And now that the context is given, let’s come back to the present.

When I go to my office, I always bring art supplies with me, specially if I’m going by train because I have lots of time to paint or sketch something. That’s why inside my backpack I always carry my plein air painting kit, which consists of travel brushes, a small metal palette with some colors, small water cup, etc.

But after months of doing so, I realized I don’t use it that often because setting up a cup of water in the train can be problematic, I don’t manage to fill the sketchbook during my journey, I’m carrying with that extra weight every day … long story short, I was not making it easy for me to paint in my commute.

So I decided it was time to carry a lighter kit! And that’s when I found again in the drawers of my studio, my water brush and my unfinished A6 cellulose sketchbook from 2018, that you can see in the first photo of the blog post.

My Art Toolkit Folio Palette filled in with different watercolors

After thinking about different kits and options, I realised that the combination of my water brush, the unfinished A6 cellulose sketchbook together with my beloved Art Toolkit Folio Palette (@arttoolkit), was the lightest kit I could carry. That’s why I decided to bring those with me yesterday in my commute because the worst that could happen is that I didn’t use them, as it already happened with the previous painting kit.

Surprisingly I used them even twice (maybe because I forgot to bring my laptop to my office and had to come back and make the commute twice), or maybe because I was excited for the change and I realised the water brush makes it soooo easy to paint with watercolors on a train!

For me, it removes all the friction of setting up a water cup and spilling water everywhere

Even if I didn’t practised with it during these years I also saw I had better water control than when I started and I thought that maybe this happened because I’ve been painting with watercolours for five years already and I understand how much water I need and not necessarily related to the brush itself!

Isn’t life interesting when you discover and unveil decisions or patterns of the past? 🤔

The small sketchbook also played its part because I could even use the tiny tables on the train to have some support while painting. And the best is yet to come… the cellulose paper made my painting so loose and playful and full of textures that I ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT ☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️

And I say “☹️“ because these past months I’ve been looking into painting more loosely and with less detail and I realised all I needed was to use cellulose paper 🤣🤣🤣 !!!!! Plot twist 🤯

The painting I made and my commute watercolor kit

Then I felt that I missed out so much during those years I ignored these supplies, although maybe now was just the right time to try them and not that much at the beginning of my painting journey, I don’t know!

So this is a message to you, to bring back your most hated art supplies ever if you still have them around and maybe get surprised by them ! :) (Or not)

Bring back your most hated art supplies ever if you still have them around and be prepared to be blown away too 😉

I leave you below a few detail photos of the said painting on the train! I finished the painting with a few pencil marks and I’m really happy with it.

I hope you liked the story, thank you very much for reading it 💚 and let me know in the comments if you had a similar experience at some point, I’d love to know!!