Fresh New Art Supplies

"Life is about using the whole box of crayons."

-- RuPaul

A well-used lemon yellow crayon 3-27-14

"A box of new crayons! 

Now they're all pointy, lined up in order, bright and perfect.

Soon they'll be a bunch of ground down, rounded, indistinguishable stumps,

missing their wrappers and smudged with other colors.

Sometimes life seems unbearably tragic."

-- Bill Watterson

What is it about fresh, virgin art supplies that makes me so giddy?

I think it is the vastness of the untapped potential and possibility that lies within them -- in each box of new crayons and pencils, in each tube of paint, in each pristine tablet of paper, in every straight edged brick of fresh, untouched clay.

New art supplies still hold the unsullied hope and promise of perfection, of wild and ambitious visions that haven't been dashed by mistakes or blunders or disappointment. They could still become anything I can dream of.

Leo and I went to the art supply store yesterday to re-stock. He needed a couple of tubes of oil paint, and I needed some acrylics. We also bought brushes and I picked up a fresh linoleum block and some Super Sculpey. I got a huge roll of black paper to use as a photo backdrop, and I also grabbed a box of little markers with points like brushes. I always try to find something new to experiment with and they looked interesting.

I don't have any particular plans for my new stuff. But they'll get their chance. Inspiration will strike. It usually does.

My love affair with new art supplies goes way, way back.

My dad was a high school guidance counselor, and when I was little he was also the Santa Claus at the annual high school employees Christmas party. (I was clueless. The suit and beard totally fooled me.)  The teachers and office staff all filled his bag with pre-wrapped gifts for their own kids, and then my dad distributed them as if he'd brought the stuff all the way from the North Pole.

Every year I got a box of new crayons. Not just a regular box, but this HUGE flat of 124 (and not the fat, little kid ones, but the slim, pointy big kid kind) all laid out in a single layer, each crayon resting snugly in it's own little space in the specially-molded plastic tray. 

I have three sisters, and the rest of the year we had to share our crayons, which were all dumped into a jumbled grubby mess in common ratty shoe box. As far as I was concerned, having my very own pristine box of 124 crayons was the true Christmas miracle. 

I was always just a little afraid to start using my new crayons. I didn't want to break the spell. There were colors in there I'd never even seen.

I distinctly remember finding the silver crayon for the first time, with its sparkly metallic flecks embedded right into the wax. I took it to the kitchen to show my mother, cradling it gently in my cupped palms like an injured baby bird.

Me: (breathless) "What is this?"  (I still too young to read the words on the wrapper).

Her: (bored) Silver. (Her unspoken "duh!" rang loudly in the subtext.)

I carried Silver back to the family room floor where I was coloring, and began.

The only word I knew how to spell at the time, besides my own name, was "love," which I wrote in sky blue on a piece of blank paper. Then I colored all around the letters with my new silver crayon. I soon discovered that the harder I pressed, the more metallic glitter it released. So I colored feverishly until "love" was surrounded by a solid sea of silver shimmer -- until my beautiful crayon was a ground down stump in my hot, sweaty little hand.

Resting back in the tray, Silver looked oddly shortened and rounded next to her slim and pointy friends. 

I loved her all the more for that.

Which ... Ding! Ding! Ding!

Brings us to the first ever "One Good Thing Coloring Page!"

I made this special picture of fresh new crayons just for you, so you can print it out and color it in however you like. You can use crayons, paint, lipstick -- whatever. You can even color it digitally on your computer if you want. You can make them any color you want to.

There are no rules, because rules suck. 

Have fun!

New crayons 3-27-14

I Don't Need No Stinkin' Paintbrush

"We become what we behold.

We shape our tools, and thereafter, our tools shape us."

-- Marshall McLuhan

Peacock (acrylic on board) 2-8-14

"The intentions of a tool are what it does.

A hammer intends to strike, a vise intends to hold fast, a lever intends to lift.

They are what it is made for.

But sometimes a tool may have other uses that you don't know.

Sometimes in doing what you intend, you also do what the knife intends, without knowing."

-- Philip Pullman,
His Dark Materials Trilogy:
The Golden Compass/The Subtle Knife/The Amber Spyglass

I'm afraid of paintbrushes.

Potato, palette knife, wine corks, comb and pencil 2-8-14

There, I said it.

They make me anxious.

Probably it's because I never learned to use them right. I've just faked it all my life, and not very well.

I don't know what it is. Something about painting with a brush feels too formal, or fussy, or proper, or unforgiving. Painting with brushes is intimidating -- like making forced conversation about topics I don't understand with people I don't like at a cocktail party where everyone's drinking 30-year-old cognac in crystal stemware when I'd be so much happier just shooting the shit with my best friend on the backyard patio over a bottle of $3 Merlot in Solo cups.

At the art store, I never know which brushes to buy. The choices are overwhelming, and good brushes aren't exactly cheap. If I fuck one up, it's gonna cost me some coin. And I don't take very good care of the brushes I do have. Just ask them. I let paint dry in their bristles all the time, or else I leave them soaking for days in Mason jars half full of paint-stained water. When I finally rescue them they're all frayed and fuzzy and stained. They look startled. Shell shocked.

Nevertheless, sometimes I do get the itch to paint a picture. And when I do, so as to allay any fear or anxiety, I typically don't reach for the brushes. I go for more non-traditional tools, non-threatening tools, familiar tools, tools that aren't specifically meant for painting at all.

I once had a ceramics teacher named Martha who taught me that "anything can be a tool."

Like potatoes. Or a comb. Or a pencil. Or wine corks (n this case, the rubberized kind from that cheap Merlot I was mentioning.) If I do use a painting-specific tool, it's more likely to be a palette knife than a brush. I like to scoop big blobs of paint like peanut butter straight from the jar and then glop it around. Smushing and smearing wet paint around with a potato feels good. So does zipping through it with a plastic comb.

As with most of the art forms I dabble in, painting is about therapy. I do it for the feeling I get while I'm actively engaged in it, not necessarily for how I feel about the piece that results from it. And if painting with brushes makes me anxious, well then it's not therapeutic. It is counterproductive. And I'm not about that life. Not anymore.

I don't know if my peacock painting is any good. And I don't really care. All I know is that while I was painting it, I felt happy. And feeling happy is always a good thing, no matter how you paint it.