There are certain supplies that always get a bad rap, and not because of the supplies themselves. I'm talking about cheap and kids art supplies! Personally, I don't have any problems using whatever supply I can get my hands on. Sure, there are some that handle better, blend better, mix better, etc. etc. etc.. But, that doesn't mean you can't make long lasting and beautiful artwork with the cheaper andor kids grade supplies. And, alot of the time, I will find cheap/kids supplies of mediums/tools that I'd never heard of or used before! So, they're like my gateway "drug" into getting more expensive versionsπ (sometimes, anyways π).
As an example of one such cheap/kids grade art supply that I've used and found to be pretty fun and make beautiful textures with are the tempera paint sticks by Kwik Stix. Below you can see a portrait I made of the super talented Alan Cumming using the tempera sticks, a little acrylic white paint and a pallet knife to scrape and move the paint around. The paper I used was, however, not mixed media paper but pastel paper π.
Alan Cumming |
I had never heard of paint sticks before so, when I saw these, I started to think of ideas on what to make with them. It honestly felt like I was cutting/crushing up bits of glue stick with my pallet knife π so, naturally, I felt like I wasn't doing something right! But it also gave me a oil-meets-impasto style vibe as I worked the paints around, blending them with my dotting tools and colour shaper tools and also smearing larger portions around, or mixing the colors together, with my pallet knife. Here's a quick speed painting of how I painted over my sketch. (sorry for the bad quality. The original file got corrupted, so I was left with the Instagram version π).