New supplies

As promised: the new supplies arrived yesterday via Caribbean Express. On the left is a Strathmore "Dry Media" spiral-bound sketchbook, 14 x 11"; centre, same thing 12 x 9"; right, Strathmore Windpower Drawing sketchbook made of recycled paper, 12 x 9", spiral bound. The back covers are made of strong cardboard which I was wondering about because they were not expensive and it's a risk buying things online without handling them. Plus, the extra inch on the 12 x 9's gives a lot of extra room, surprisingly. 

In front is an open 12 x 9" sketchbook, a set of Caran d"Ache oil pastels in a tin box with a hinged lid which snaps shut, and in the middle two graphite sticks. 

One of the 12 x 9" sketchbooks is already well under way because I had a pile of stuff waiting to stick into it. I'm happy with these things, they are as described on the Dick Blick website, in fact they're even better, because the "Dry Media" sketchbook takes wet media quite well, not too badly anyway (but I'm not fussy about sketchbooks, someone else might disagree).

Gone shopping

It's been a while since I've been to the art shop but yesterday I bust out and went shopping at Dick Blick. Normally I'd go down the road to Deltex, the greatest art shop ever, but my car is down at the moment. Besides, I was mainly looking for sketchbooks and it's difficult for any art shop in Trinidad to stock a wide enough range of papers, bindings and sizes. This is where online is so brilliant. They have every size of sketchbook known to man, 3.5 x 5 up to 18 x 24 ins and everything in between. Moleskines for ever with neat features like pockets and rubber bands. Another variable is the number of pages, and this time I didn't want anything too big. Then there's the bindings. Hardcover, paperback, spiral bound, wire bound. Bound on the long side ("SIDE"), bound on the short side ("TOP"). Ah. This is what I was after, a wire-bound sketchbook with the binding on the long side. Strangely I've not seen these in Deltex or maybe I was too late. Dick Blick had so many it was hard to choose, so I decided to try a few, various permutations of number of pages and overall size (A3 and A4), all of them wire-bound on the long side. Also added a pack of oil pastels to the cart and a couple of graphite sticks. I am so looking forward to these things arriving and will post a photo when they come.

Single figures

Page 204 of A4 sketchbook

Into single figures now with the 220-page sketchbook, just a few to go. Am I at the end of the course as I thought would be the case? Unfortunately no. It's over a year now and I've made no progress at all. Many days I fear that the day I finish the sketchbook will be the day I formally pack it in, and for this reason I'm thinking to leave the last couple of pages blank (superstition).

[Countdown: empty pages in main sketchbook = 7]