As I mentioned last week, I signed up for a subscription box called ArtSnacks, which sends you some art supplies (and a snack) every month. Art supplies are horrible and addicting, so here we are.
Anyway. My plan is to try it out for a few months and see how I feel about things. And I got my first box on Friday, which was smaller than I expected (dunno why I expected otherwise, it’s just pens and stuff) and contained a jaw breaker as the snack for the month.
(Jaw breakers! My archnemesis. I hate actually sucking on candy but you must.)
They have an #artsnackschallenge each month, where you’re supposed to create art using all of (and only) what you got for the month, so this is mine:
(The blue is hard to see on the picture, but it’s on the inner and outer edges of the petals.)
I noticed that some other people got different colors, which is interesting to me, because some of the other art boxes I considered sent the same colors to everyone, sort of as a theme each month.
Quick thoughts on the supplies sent:
Kuretake-ZIG Cambio Tambien Brush Pen
This is the yellow-orange marker looking thing. I like it–the paint? ink? flows really nice and it creates a great, even color.
Uni-POSCA PCF-350 Brush Tip Paint Marker
This is the green one. I find it kind of intimidating, honestly. (Also, I misread the directions and got paint on my carpet, which was hard to get out.) It’s pretty thick. Do like the color, though.
Faber-Castell Polychromos Colored Pencil
This is the NICEST color pencil. Pretty color, too. Wonder if I could make a whole picture with just it? Probably. Things to practice.
Sakura Pigma Micron Pen
Let me tell you how many of these pens I own. At least ten. I love them a lot; I use them whenever I’m working with ink. This is their 03 size, which is my favorite, because it’s not too thin and not too thick.
Initial thoughts? The brush pen/markers are not something I would have picked up on my own, so they’re the best things out of the box, because it lets me experiment with new mediums. The colored pencil is really great, since I tend to color with pencils, since I feel like I have more control with them than other methods I’ve tried. And, well, I didn’t need another micron pen but I can’t really be sad about it.
So I’m up for another month at least!
And now, on to the Luddite challenge. If you recall, this is a yearlong challenge I signed up for at the beginning of the year, where you handwrite a story instead of your usual methods. I signed up for 10 pages, which I am now past.
I’m working on a long novella/short novel-length story which is a sequel to a story that was published in an anthology six years ago.
And, to be honest, I don’t know that I like writing a longer work by hand. I feel like it’s hard to tell where I am and how quickly I need to be hitting my plot points, which is making me anxious.
It’s also slower. It takes me, oh, twenty minutes to handwrite a page, which is maybe 250 words. Probably less. I’m not really keeping track because ugh, but when I typed up the first seven and a half pages, it only ended up being about 1200 words.
Now that I’ve hit my goal for the challenge, I’m seriously considering switching over to typing the rest of the story. It kind of feels like cheating, but it also feels like I’m not getting anywhere as is.
Not to say that handwriting is bad! There’s ton of good reasons to handwrite–you’re somewhere without a computer, you’ve got some nasty writer’s block (I find switching mediums can really help), you’re writing something short or trying out a scene that may or may not make it into the final story. Lots more.
Things to consider. But not necessarily now. I’ve got to finish my changeling story. I’m doing a tag challenge this month where one person writes a logline, the next writes an outline, and the third writes the story. I’ve been given a contemp story with no speculative elements, which should be interesting, if uncomfortably out of my wheel house. And I’ve got to do Nano prep and the normal education activities for the month.
But I am glad I gave the challenge a go. Always good to try new things!
Tried anything new that was fun and/or interesting lately, squiders?
