News — supplies

I am now 8 days through the 100 Days Project. This is a hashtag & trend I see going around social media every year--the goal is to do a small creative activity for 100 days. Ideally it would be an unbroken stretch, but life happens, so just keep going. Even though I have really disliked painting every day when I participate in July's World Watercolor Month, for some reason this had been calling to me. The project is an official thing, with a website and community and everything, and it has an official start date at the end of January. But I...

Sketchbooks haven't been a huge part of my artistic practice thus far. I tend to tear up my large sheets of watercolor paper for small tests and experiments instead. However, last fall I finally completed my first sketchbook and wanted to give you a video tour of it! It took me 2 years to use all the pages in this sketchbook I made myself. Most watercolor sketchbooks contain awful cellulose paper, so I made this one by hand with a stab binding technique and 100% cotton Bee paper.

Welcome to the Late Blooming Watercolors Late Holiday Gift Guide! Christmas is just over a week away, so this gift guide will only be useful if you need to do some last minute shopping for the budding watercolorist in your life. 1. Winsor & Newton Cotman Watercolor Sketcher's Pocket Box Set This is one of the first sets of decent watercolor paint I purchased, and it's still my number 1 recommendation for those getting started with watercolor. It's considered "student" grade paint, but it's still a huge step up from the Crayola watercolors many of us used as children. It comes with a...

How do you decide what to focus on? I want to do ALL THE THINGS! Lately I’ve been following a ton of printmakers on Instagram. I’d seen some beautiful prints from artists such as Kim Herringe and Sarah Matthews, so I recently asked for and got a gel printing plate for my birthday. I was hoping I could use watercolor paint with it instead of my beat up old baking sheet...but that was not to be. I tried it first with watercolor of course, but it took a ton of paint to get what was not even a smooth layer (shown...

I have the frugal instincts of a 90 year old grandma who grew up in the great depression and can't seem to let go of anything. My husband makes fun of me for cutting open tubes of lotion so that I can scoop out every last glop. I was using the handle of my toothbrush just the other night to flatten and push any remaining toothpaste up to the top of the tube, and he took it away from me and called me ridiculous. But I don't care, in fact I'm trying to lean into it. And I prefer to...