7 Days, 7 Untried Things

Like, I guess, many other artsy-craftsy people, I'm World Champion when it comes to buying new art supplies and then forgetting to use them. My shelves are filled with stuff I've bought with good intentions, but that I've somehow managed to forget to explore and use, because another interesting thing came along and grabbed my attention. It's a severe case of AADD, i.e Artist's Attention Deficit Disorder.

Therefore, I decided that my next challenge will be to look through my shelves and try one unexplored material/art supply every day for 7 days. I had a warm up exercise yesterday with a set of pastel pencils that I've have for years and years. I bought them after I'd been to an exhibition of children's book illustrations. I was blown away by some pastel drawings and when the aforesaid pencils were on sale a little later I splashed out. And that was it. Since then they've been part of my standing exhibition of art supplies.

So yesterday I grabbed those pencils and some cool black drawing paper I also bought in a sale a while ago and set to work. Oh my, I enjoyed it! The inner kindergartener in me revelled. I didn't do any planning, I just doodled with coloured shapes. I'm afraid that the fixative darkened the colours a bit, and the scan didn't do much to improve the situation, so the drawing may not look as vibrant as it looked to me while I was working. The result of working pastel pencils over black paper reminds me of batik fabric, and this is something I'd like to explore more.