Stop Buying Art Supplies Do This Instead

Be honest, how many unopened art supplies are sitting on your shelf right now? Yeah, me too. It's tempting to think that if we want to make art, we should, of course, begin by shopping. We resolve to really get into the creative mode, and tail wagging, we prance off to the art supply store, browse through walls of pens and shelves of sketchbooks and bins of brushes, and we consider locked racks of spray paints and spools of armature wire and lino knives and airbrush frisket, and we stare blankly at tubes of yellow watercolor that arbitrarily cost a buck or a Benjamin. And finally, we stagger home. Our credit cards limp with exhaustion, clutching bags of random gear, unsure of what to do with most of it. Our desire to create? Depleted. Our sense of wonder? Withered. Our vision of ourselves happily drawing and painting away in a sunlit studio? Obscured by the heaps of the art supplies that we bought last time we were seized with this fever, many of them identical to the ones in the bags that we just dumped in the vestibule. Unfortunately, the art supply store doesn't supply what we actually need. The art supply store doesn't sell sweat. It doesn't stock alarm clocks to get you up an hour earlier. It doesn't sell blinders and earplugs to keep you focused. It doesn't sell hard knocks, experience, crying towels, or erasers to erase your fear of failure. The art supply store doesn't even come with instructions. If you want to draw, pick up that ballpoint pen in the kitchen drawer. Flip open that sketchbook that you bought years ago that's too good to use. Pull up a chair and draw whatever is in front of you. Keep doing that every day until the very last page of that good sketchbook is full. Repeat. After doing this a whole bunch of times, you have permission to go to the art supply store. Buy a single Tombow marker, N65 warm gray or N52 cool gray. It doesn't matter which one. It should set you back less than three dollars. Practice with that brush marker and study how to add tone to your pen drawings. When that marker is used up, add a couple of other grays. When they're used up, replenish and maybe add a sepia colored marker. A month later, reward yourself with a light blue marker and then a yellow and then a red. When you've filled 10 sketchbooks like this, buy a Winsor & Newton art grade watercolor field set. Spend a hundred dollars on this set and buy one watercolor brush. Spend twenty dollars on that brush and then sign up for watercolor rules and how to break them at sketchbook school and begin to fill as many moderately priced watercolor sketchbooks as you can. And after that, you're on your own. Buy whatever you want. You've earned it. If you'd like to see more practical tips like this one, watch this.