Spring Shopping Spree

Yes, I went shopping today. It was such a beautiful day I just couldn’t resist taking a trip to Bellevue and doing a little shopping at Daniel Smith’s.

I came home with a new pencil case to use for my urban sketching and several new watercolor paints.

The pencil case is pretty cool, it has two sides and holds 48 pencils, although less if you’ve got brushes in there and other things. I’ve put all I need in it to get some quick sketching in, even the paints!

Here’s what I’ve got in there: two water brushes, two sawed off flat brushes (yes I did that today by myself!), a micron ink pen, a white Sakura jelly roll pen, several graphite pencils, a whole lot of watercolor pencils, a small spray bottle, eraser, paper towels, and even a tiny tin of watercolors. It all fits! :-)

The tin has the three primaries in it and either Black or Payne’s Gray, I forget which.

The paints I came home with were the following: Mars Yellow, Goethite – Brown Ochre, German Green Raw Umber, Perylene Maroon (a fabulous color, I’m already in love with it), and Black Tourmaline Genuine. I’ll make color swatch cards of all of them soon and once I do, I’ll show off the colors here. The majority of these new colors are earth tones. I suppose I’m still looking for the perfect ochre, maybe I’ll find it amongst these new ones. ;-)

To make the day even better, I edited another chapter AND my copy of the "Grey Fairy Book," by Andrew Lang arrived in the mail today. This completes my set of the colored fairy books! Yeah! I now have a TON of H.J. Ford artwork to reference. What could be better?