Art store finds

is there anything better than just meandering through your favorite art store, finding new things that you can't possibly live without?  i must admit, most of my friends can wander through clothes stores or shoe stores until they can barely stand.  i don't have the patience for that.  but put me in a good bookstore (preferably, with a hot cup of coffee in hand) or an art store, filled with all those heady, artsy smells, and I can easily while away an afternoon-- or even a full day!

this past weekend, as i was meandering through one of my favorite local art stores, i came upon these itsy bitsy, teeny weeny visual journals from strathmore in three different types:  90 lb watercolor, 100 lb bristol-vellum and 140 lb watercolor.  these tiny little gems are only 3.5" x 5" and were on sale for $2.50 each!  i have to say, i'm loving them.

i don't know what it is about me but i am having a very hard time working in what seems to be everyone's favorite sketchbook-- the ~8x5" moleskin.  while i love the idea of them, i find the size all wrong. it's as if it's not big enough to really spread out and get my doodle on and not small enough to force me to mentally restrict myself.  I end up feeling like i don't have enough room.  and the larger moleskin journals have paper that's just too thin for me to work on.

as counter-intuitive as it sounds, i rather like the teeny weeny 3x5 format of these little journals.  they seem to make me less inhibited, since how much can you really screw up on something the size of a small index card??  and at 2.50 for a whole 'pad' full of watercolor pages, i don't mind screwing up a little anyway.  as a result, i've had lots of fun just doodling to my heart's content and then playing with the bold colors of my dr. ph martin's watercolors. this one was done on the 90 lb. watercolor paper.

i also splurged on some pan pastels, which i've seen lori vleigen mention before in some of her lovely art. (i may need to stop looking at her posts-- she's far too inspiring!)  i bought a set of only 5 and have played with them a little but must admit i like the vibrancy of my watercolors better.  but, i think i might just need to experiment some more to figure out how to better blend with them. 

i do like the fact that you can erase them... and create some interesting effects that way!  definitely something i'll keep playing with! 

hope everyone's having a great week. happy hump day!