This week John and Danny dive into the world of art supplies as they discuss some of their favorite tools, as well as their go-to travel kits and journals. Listen along as they ultimately answer the question- Does your choice of art supplies really matter?
From Season 3 of "art for all," the Sketchbook Skool podcast. Join artists/authors, Danny Gregory and John Muir Laws in rich discussions about the creative process.
This week John and Danny dive into the world of art supplies as they discuss some of their favorite tools, as well as their go-to travel kits and journals. Listen along as they ultimately answer the question- Does your choice of art supplies really matter?
From Season 3 of "art for all," the Sketchbook Skool podcast. Join artists/authors, Danny Gregory and John Muir Laws in rich discussions about the creative process.
Hi there. This is Danny Gregory and you're listening to the art for all podcast. I am a writer and an artist and a teacher and a this and the that. And every week I get together with my friend John Muir laws, and we talk about something to do with making stuff. Jack, why don't you introduce yourself?
John Muir Laws:Hi there. I'm I'm Jack laws and I am a a scientist with a who explores the world often through, through, by making images. And I'm also Danny's friend.
Danny Gregory:There you go. So this week's episode is going to focus on art supplies. Yes. We love art supplies. Hopefully you love art supplies too. And we're going to talk about the art supplies. We like the art supplies. We may not like what we use, how we've changed over time. What we would recommend you try, how we'll use, what we use, what we use, how we use it and various other confusing things. It won't be confusing them. And we're going to talk about it in depth. If you want to write down. Some tips and suggestions you might want to do that. We'll also put stuff in the show notes, so you'll be able to find them, but this should be a lot of fun. And I'm sure we are going to fill the time easily. Don't you think? I think so.
John Muir Laws:This'll be great.
Danny Gregory:Let's get to it. So you were giving me some advice.
John Muir Laws:Well it just I asked how you're doing and there was a big sign and then you said, okay. And that made me think that you might be pushing yourself really hard and just wanted to remind you about the, the, the, the power of taking some time out for Danny and that if you were to do that, this community would understand.
Danny Gregory:Yeah. I think that that's probably true. I tend to take on a lot of things and then I decide that you know, that it's time to wrap up some of them, but then instead of that time that I no longer am doing those things becoming empty time, it becomes filled with new things. So, so I yeah. I, I like doing stuff. So I think that's why I ended up doing a lot of things. And when I'm not doing stuff, I'm lying around thinking about what stuff I could do, but actually my wife and I were having this very conversation this weekend, talking about how we can you know, figure out ways to do a little bit less. We have this fantasy called spa living, which is like, we live, we have a swimming pool. We live under Palm trees. It's sunshine. If we went on vacation somewhere, it would be to a place like this. So why don't we just like use this as the place where we can be that way. But anyway, that's, that's not that subject for today. Today. We have a very important subject and I'm interested to see how we do it because we we have to do, we have to pursue this subject without being. Reliant on visuals,
John Muir Laws:right? W w which is, which is a great challenge for an UN an art-related podcast in general.
Danny Gregory:True. But unless we just use the power of words to, or maybe we can have sound effects of the sounds of various art supplies being,
John Muir Laws:oh, that would be fun. Or if you just drive everybody nuts with a, just sort of saying like, peanuts look really carefully at this. So if I hold the brush this way, look at that effect. Wasn't that satisfying?
Danny Gregory:So podcast listeners, listeners think about this podcast is more. Follow it on YouTube. I think then follow it as an audio only podcast.
John Muir Laws:Oh. So they'll know that I was just sitting here and actually not demonstrating anything.
Danny Gregory:Exactly. The cat is out of the bag over the art supply bag truthful out. So our subject today is we decided we would talk about art supplies. I mean, it's, it's certainly a subject that I enjoy pursuing. And this seems to me to be a lot to talk about,
John Muir Laws:and I'm glad we're on this because I, I think I'm about ready for kind of a re-evaluation of my kids. So I'm bouncing some ideas around with you would be a great thing on a regular basis. I kind of sit down with my stuff and look at that and of what am I not really using and what can stay at home and, and sort of make some changes in. So the, the media that I use and I'm just at that point right now. So that would be, it would be great to kind of hear your thoughts about this and maybe something pops into my kit for a while, just because of this conversation on to, to, to play
Danny Gregory:with and test out. I mean, yeah. Cause I'm going through, I'm also curious reevaluation because I'm wanting, I want to redo my studio and I just have a lot of stuff around me and I want to kind of look, go through it all and decide like what actually needs to be on my drawing table and what can go away and what could be, can go completely away. It's also an opportunity to go through like test every pen, you know, it's always nice to like go through and go, okay. I have a feeling that half of these pens are dried out or. I dunno. So let's, let's start by talking about pens because I think the pens are to me, they're kind of the backbone of, of what I do. And I have certainly changed my point of view about different pens, many times over the decades that I've been drawing, you know?
John Muir Laws:So the, the, the pen is your sort of favorite sort of starting drawing tool, right? Yes. If sort of on your sort of Penn desert island what, what what type of Penn does there just happen to be a case of that walked, washed up on the shore?
Danny Gregory:You know, that's tough because I have different pens for different uses in different moods. I would say the the pen I use probably come back to the most is the Tombow fit in the suitcase. Sort of, it's a kind of somewhere between a brush and a pen food in a suitcase,
John Muir Laws:suitcase,
Danny Gregory:footedness, suitcase how I don't often spell it, but I can tell you, let me just quickly see if I can,
John Muir Laws:there's gotta be one on hand somewhere. Okay. So,
Danny Gregory:Yeah, there's it doesn't actually say it. It says in Japanese it's called a calligraphy pen it's made by tomboy. It is the WSB H one 50. It is, it's got to be a brush pen. it's gotta be a way of spelling it that I there's gotta be internet.
John Muir Laws:The, the by the time this comes out, it will be in the show notes.
Danny Gregory:It's true. It will be okay. But here's how you do spell it. F U D E N food, N O C K S U K E food in a suitcase. I don't know how you pronounce it. That probably isn't how you pronounce it, but that's kind of how I pronounce it. So is
John Muir Laws:this a sort of a responsive pen that where you press harder, you got a thicker line, press later, get a
Danny Gregory:big time and it's waterproof and there's actually two of them. There's two different kinds. There's this? Barrel. And it was a greenish barrel. They're both black ink. The greenish barrel is a bit softer, I think. But yeah, to me, it's like, it's, it's not really a brush pen. I also like the Pentel brush pen and there's various kinds of Pentel brush pens that I like a lot, but that's really springing. And that's like, that's like drawing with a brush. This thing is like drawing with pen essentially. But then if you push it all, you could, you can go from very thin to like nice and squishy lines and in-between so, you know, I've gone through gazillions of pens. That's the one I like a lot. You know, I like a lot of people have used the pygmy microns pen that you use or the Pigman microns are. You know, they're pretty basic. Drawing pen. They come in lots of different sizes and they're pretty good. They're good. But they, again, they, their lines tend to be pretty set, right? If you want a fatter line, you go to a higher, higher number. But w
John Muir Laws:when I was first learning about line variation, those, I found it really, I couldn't, my brain couldn't handle data. Like I'm going to capture this shape and get this line variation at the same time. So I would just do a drawing with the small pigment and then put that down and pick up the larger size pigment and go over some of those lines and just kind of picking them up a little bit and then go over some of those lines with an even thicker pigment. And so that helped me kind of compartmentalize sort of the idea of, of line variation rather than I think it's, it's not really cool to get it on the floor. I think you'd get a more interesting looking line when you get it on the
Danny Gregory:floor. I mean it's expressive. I think. Yeah. I think it's, it's sort of like you know, sometimes a technical pen could be like, I imagine playing like a digital keyboard is, you know, right. As, as compared to like playing a violin where you can really, you know, they're in between notes, let's say I don't, I have no idea what I'm talking about. I don't know how to play the violin. I don't know very much about music as a player, but I think the things that are most expressive are not either, you know, a, to B to C, but they are in between those points. They are right there and, and a lot of them are not on purpose or, or, or planned. It's just like, you feel more something. And so you push a little harder or you pull back or you just do things that, and that to me is the most interesting lines, right? As opposed to. I mean, digital drawing for instance, took it earlier on when it came to digital drawing. When you do a drawing on an, with a mouse, let's say the line was really not expressive. The mouse was not an expressive thing to draw with. You know, it will break down into pixels. It was just ugly and mechanical feeling. And so you want to have something that expresses your humanity and that I mean, a brush is probably the most, the best example of that.
John Muir Laws:Yeah. My, my I think my go-to flexible, expressive drawing pen has, has been the, the zebras sensations. Super fine tip brush pen,
Danny Gregory:Zen. Oh, the zebra. Yeah, that's a brand that we're just starting to, to have more and more doing. We're working with zebra in some ways. And they're an interesting company that is more of like a office supply stuff and a lot of, a lot of things that they do, but they're Japanese, I think originally. Yes.
John Muir Laws:So this, this, this pen sort of same, same deal. You press lightly, you get a super fine line and you can get a really expressive, thick one. My my daughters and and, and I call these mark pins because the, the first time we saw them, they were in the hands of an illustrator friend of mine, Mark Simmons. And he was, he was getting all these expressive lines and I looked over, shorts said, wow, that's really cool. You know how you. You're you're impressed by somebody's artwork. The most your brain can focus on at any. One moment is like, oh, it must be the tool you're using that. That's a really neat pen. And he said, yeah, it's really great liquid to these lines that makes here. And he just turned around and he handed me his pen. He said, here, this is now yours. Just go, go play with it. And, and, and, and do that. So my daughters and I call it the mark pen. And I now always try to have an extra mark pen or two in my journaling kit. So I can pull a Mark Simmons when somebody else looks over my shoulder and says, Hey, That's a really, really cool pen. I can turn around. I can turn around and say like, yeah, it's great here. This one's now a year. So I'm trying to spread the the, the, the art supply love. I do the same thing with with Penn tells water brushes, which we'll be talking about a little bit later. I find that I always have to have a few extras of those because when people see it, they just freak out and they have one and say, you can totally make somebody stay. It doesn't make your, your art kit that much heavier by just having a few extras of those along. And and, and it absolutely makes somebody's day. Okay.
Danny Gregory:It's funny how you can get like really into one particular pan or one cookie thing where it's like, I can't use anything but that right. It's possible to, to get locked into that. And so that when you play something, play with something else, it feels like it doesn't, it's just not right. You can't draw. It's kind of silly because of course you can draw with anything and it doesn't really matter, but, but you can really just become rigid about it. Yeah.
John Muir Laws:Fortunately, one of my favorite drawing tools is just the, the, the cheapest ballpoint pens that you can find. And you know, they're, they're everywhere. They're in the motel lobby. They are just, you know, discarded on bus seats. The, a, there. They're there until they kind of get to that stage where they are going to just spit out random blobs of, of a ballpoint pen ink for your hands to smudge into. They're great little responsive, very, very responsive drawing tools. Cause you can press hard. You can get the bold line to go lightly. You get that light line, you can make little shades of gray with them and they're they're everywhere. So because that one then got adopted into my, my archive of favorite drawing tools, should my I, should I lose my kit? There's always going to be one of those somewhere on hand nearby.
Danny Gregory:Yeah. I do you have, do you have the ones from the bank with a chain still attached to the end of them?
John Muir Laws:Th that, that that's that's that's too much of a tell.
Danny Gregory:Yeah, I remember. James Jean. Who's a really amazing artist. I'm not sure if you've ever seen his stuff, but he was drawing with these beautiful, beautiful ballpoint pen drawings in the head, a very specific type of Japanese ballpoint pen. And it became this whole thing of like, how do you find these exact pans? You can go off on these quests for particular art supplies. Like it's only available. You know, it takes three months to mail to you. You can only buy them three to all these kinds of, there are all these rules that make it sort of more exotic and, and you know, rare some hair.
John Muir Laws:And then there's the, the ones that are in the lobby of motel six and
Danny Gregory:going out to check into a motel six, it costs it's expensive and elaborate. Yeah. I started out using a rollerball pen, like the universal that was the first pen I drew with for years. And it's it's a good pen. It's nice. And it's. The line is a little harsh to me now. I don't like it so much anymore. And occasionally you can get a bit gloppy, you know, where suddenly it can spit out some lines and also it can sometimes take a little bit longer to dry. You know, but again, I spent so long and part of the reason that I got into that pen was because I just decided when I first started to draw, like I am not going to get involved in the, in the search for the best pen. I'm not going to force myself to just use some crappy pen, which I pulled out of the art supply closet and in the office. And that is, that's what I'm stuck with until I get to a certain point when then I'm allowed to start doing variations. But I tend to go through these kind of very Catholic phases where I'm like, this is. There are lots of rules and then, then I'll rebel against that. And there are no, there can be no rules and I'll go with anything. But,
John Muir Laws:and yourself in the motel six,
Danny Gregory:what about fountain pens? Do you ever, have you ever used for
John Muir Laws:the longest time? I, I, I was, I guess I thought of fountain pens as just the, you know, the, the, the blot and bleeder kind of pens that my, my dad had. And so lumped those all in together until somebody just sort of mailed me one of these inexpensive preppy fountain pens and said, Jack, just try it. And,
Danny Gregory:They're not okay. And happy. It's just, the brand is called preppy. It's a Japanese brand right there. Yes.
John Muir Laws:Prednisone, it says preppy on the side. Made in Japan. And that's a really, really solid pen. I was actually just drawing with it right before our podcast podcast started and just thinking like, oh, that, that feels, that feels nice. It feels good. I you know, I've been told by fountain pin people about the, the, the Lammy pens, if I'm pronouncing it right. Let me safari. Yeah, the Lammy safari. So I got myself allows me safari, which promptly clogged, and it was to figure out how to unclog it. And so it may be a great pen, but I haven't experienced that because my, the one that I have just decided to, to, to stop up and I haven't had the motivation to, to go fix that because the, the, the, the, the, the preppy, which is a less expensive pen just seemed to be, it was flowing. And so. I just went with that. So I haven't had the full safari experience.
Danny Gregory:Yeah. I'm sorry to hear that. That happened to you. I did a workshop, taught a workshop on using fountain pens and we did a whole demonstration about how to clean them and break them down. It's pretty simple.
John Muir Laws:I, I I've taken this thing apart. The, the, the, the Safaria part pulled all the pieces apart was flushing it with bulb syringes and yes, yes. I got my nip off and but still she won't flow.
Danny Gregory:Yeah. I mean what did, and were you just using like a cartridge, regular cartridge? Yes. Okay. Yeah, because you know, we found pens, you can get a thing called a converter, which plugs into where the cartridge goes, and then you can put in any kind of ink. But not any kind of bank. There's certain kinds of, if you put India ink into a fountain pen, it'll destroy it immediately. There are definitely different kinds of banks. And one of the things that people rest with with fountain pens is, is waterproofness because most found Pennings are not waterproof. And if you do a drawing and any watercolor over it, of course it will be a disaster if you don't have waterproof ink, but there are ways of getting waterproofing. In fact, on schedule souls channel, we have several videos addressing the subject, cause it's a big, hot subject with people, but I like fountain pens a lot. I like the Lammy Safaria own about 10 of them. In part, because there are three different nibs and they're not expensive. I think they're less than 20 bucks, but they are, they're really Hardy. And you can have different colored ones. You can have different colored inks in them. They are sort of the. VW beetle of fountain pens by in law. So, and I like a nice fat nib and I think the preppy does, has a kind of a thinner scratch
John Muir Laws:from what I remember, there's the extra fine and the fine those are the ones that I have the extra fine. I tried it and didn't like it. The, the fine well, I got a little duck going here with it and it seems to be just going along, but I don't have, I don't have something really to compare it to, you know, is a huge difference when you're kind of able to get. Several things side by side and, and kind of line them up and say, look, you know, this one works this way. This one works this way. This one smells, this one. Didn't, that's what I love about that jet Penn's website, whether they they're brilliant. They'll, they'll do those side-by-side comparisons for you of, you know, what are the least smudgy ballpoints what are the, what are the, you know, whatever it is, the kind of questions which we ask, they will geek out hard on those things and like, okay, here is the most opaque white gel pen. Thank
Danny Gregory:you. Yes. Yes, absolutely. It's great. They're like the consumer reports of, of exactly. Right. That's how I think about, but also, I mean, I think that you learn over time is that pins, ink react really differently in different kinds of people and you can have a pending. That the waterproof quality of it completely changes because you've changed the paper because of the sizing, which is the kind of stuff that paper manufacturers put on paper to make it either absorb or not absorb paint and water, all those kinds of things. Those are variable too. So you can have a pen that works perfectly, normally does everything it's supposed to do. And then suddenly you get a new sketchbook and everything goes to hell. So, you know, there's, it's do so you're all the things that you might've figured out about the pen. It's good to try it out. If you get a new sketchbook to take like the last page and just devote it to swatching, trying out all your different pens and watercolors and stuff like that, to see how, how they function.
John Muir Laws:I've never done that. That's a really good, that's a really good suggestion. And also then kind of. Breaks in that new sketchbook a little bit. And sometimes it's intimidating to jump into a new sketchbook, but you know, you can take that last page and you can turn it into a project page. And then the whole sketchbook is a little bit less intimidating. And if it still is too intimidating, then I always suggest to people to start on page two. But you might not have to do that. If you've turned the back page into something that's useful already
Danny Gregory:draw first draw first blood, as they say. But also, yeah, the first page of your schedule, by the way, should have your name and some way to contact you.
John Muir Laws:That's right. Have you ever I've I've, I've lost him and had him come back because it was there and I've also lost them without that, in it, the
Danny Gregory:rookie move. I left my left a beautiful sketchbook claim. Cause I had it like sitting next to me against the armrest and then, you know, deep plained and then realized later on that it was gone and yeah, so there's that. But yeah, definitely. It's most of course, if somebody finds a sketchbook and there is a way to get in touch with you, you know, unless they were completely horrible, pathological people, they would definitely drop you an email or send you a text. So,
John Muir Laws:but they also might just fall madly in love with you because it's such an intimate kind of vision into your life and your world. They'll be like, oh wow. I really, really want to meet this person. It's such a treat to look through other people's journals. Thank you. Can you imagine being the person who finds somebody else's sketchbook
Danny Gregory:and it's that's child or something like that? I think he would feel really terrible that this person didn't, it clearly not meant to lose this thing. So yeah, that's, that's, that's a really important thing to do. And so what about when it comes to sketchbooks? Are you a one sketchbook at a time, man? Are you a, I
John Muir Laws:tried, I tried the the, the multiple sketchbook things and found it more of a distraction. Like which 1:00 AM I supposed to use if there's, you know, sometimes the, if there's one sketchbook and it's possible for me to bring it with me everywhere I do that. But I also do have a whole sketching system in my car. So. If I'm ever bopping along and I see something that needs to have the sketchbook brought out on it. And I don't have my regular kit. I'm not I'm not, I'm not in trouble. And it doesn't, you know, the, the amount of gas that it has consumed, just carrying it around with me when I don't use it is, is insignificant. So
Danny Gregory:what do you mean by a system? What does that mean?
John Muir Laws:Well, well, a you know, these are a few of my favorite things, a little kit with my favorite things in it. So leave it in the car and it, and it rides around in the car and then I've got I've got the same that that's actually. I've got a set of supplies in my studio that are the exact same things that I bring with me into the field. And then I have a mini me version of that, that rides around in my car in case I don't have those things. So that way, when I am, I sit down in my studio, I open up my palette. I know each one of those little blocks of paint. I know where they sit relative to each other. My brush knows where to go. I use the same kinds of brushes so that you know, that also is kind of a consistent experience. If I've got something that I really like, I want to have it with me out in the. And I just sort of used the same. I used to what I did originally say, you just have one kit and I would use that in my studio and then use that out in the field. But then I discovered what I would do is I would get out in the field and realized I left the pencil on the table. Oh. And then there you are, you don't have your pencil. You've left your water brush on the table and there you are now you're in the field and there's the duck and there's no brush. So then that's why I kind of started kind of the duplicate system, the one that I carry on my hip and the one that sits in the studio. But then there is a mini me version that is that rides in the car.
Danny Gregory:So now when the sits on your hip, what do you
John Muir Laws:think is an important part of the kit? Because the, if your stuff is. Think about it in terms of kind of operant conditioning, right? If there is negative reinforcement between you and getting your nature, journaling stuff out, you're going to do it less. If you have to kind of route around the house and get all your supplies, you're less likely to bring all those supplies with you out in the field, because it's a hassle to kind of go get those things together. And then when you're out in the field, if it's a hassle to go like, oh, there's a duck I'd like to draw. Now I have my journaling things in my hand and I'm drawing, if that's smooth, you're going to do it all the time. But if you have to kind of root around in the backpack and like, where's the, where's the pallet and then the overhears, the sketchbook and move the poncho and the lunch and, oh dear the water bottle kind of leaked a little bit. And, you know, by this point, the birds flown away. So what I like to do is have everything in a kind of handy, portable pouch that just sits on my hip. So I want a shoulder bag, not a backpack because the backpack is for lunch and the shoulder bag. I can put my hand down in it. I can grab it. And in second, some journaling, and if it's in the backpack, you know, then it's much more, it's much more of a production to, to both get it out and put it back away. But if it's just, if it's right there on my hip, I can reach in, grab it, get my journal on, then put it back in and I'm trotting on down the trail. And it wasn't, it wasn't I'm not thinking like, oh, do I really want to kind of go through getting that out right now? It's kind of a see all that is that energy that thinking is. Barrier to between you and journaling more. So I'd like
Danny Gregory:to have on your hip. I was like, oh my God, I hope he's not going to say this like a Fanny pack. That would just, I mean, I'm cool, but a shoulder bag. Okay. Shoulder bags. Fine. It sounds like you need, it sounds like you need,
John Muir Laws:I actually think of it as a quick draw system. So I've sometimes been with some of my nature journaling buddies. And w w we sort of talk about kind of the idea of the quick draw nature journal and woke up on your mark, get set, draw. And so when you say draw, you try to, you get all your stuff out. You want to have your favorite thing in your hand, open to the next blank page and your journal in sort of sketching position. Like how, how much time does it take to get into, to, to, to, to draw your journal,
Danny Gregory:sketched role Macola McCloskey. Yeah. That's right.
John Muir Laws:So you, you get your journal out. It goes right back in and the it's it's, it's kind of, it's goofy and it's fun. And, and that's okay.
Danny Gregory:So yeah, I mean, I have, I have various things when I go out, I don't go into nature journaling so much, but when I do urban sketching, for instance, or if I'm travel journaling, I have a special, I do have a backpack. I tend to carry it on one shoulder, but I've had, I've had shoulder bags and they're okay. I mean, I totally agree with you that it's easier to just be able to dip in rather than having to pull it off and go through it. I got this special backpack from jet pens.com. In fact, it's a Japanese backpack. That's very light and has a gazillion pockets. When you have a lot of pockets, then you're, you can kind of get to things. And so you can have like your, your quick draw stuff, like in one pocket that you can just grab and pull out. And then you can have like, you know, deeper pockets where you put, you know, other stuff and coats and snacks and things like that. So, you know, it's, it's okay. I mean, I, I, I also sometimes take a stool and so, yeah, it's nice to be able to have like a attachment kind of in your backpack or like a sleeve or something like that, that it slides into. I've tried different ones. There's like the kind that are just three sticks that kind of telescope out there's. I try to Coleman camping stool, which is the most compact, but you're sitting sort of like three inches off the ground. You feel like a bit of a. And I remember at one point I was doing a bit of car fair amount of car drawing, and I had like a full-on folding chair with cup holders, which are actually kind of good. Cause you could put a water thing in, you can have, you know, and you could have arm rests, which were really nice, but that only works if you have a car. Cause otherwise it's ridiculous walking around carrying, like you could sort of a homeless person. Who's got a whole, I mean it's possible to have too many art supplies and too much stuff with you.
John Muir Laws:You have to do. Yeah. If you're, if you're pushing the Barca lounger in front of you, this is your, your, your gear may be getting just a little bit too bulky because what's going to happen is if that, if you start to have too many art supplies, at some point, you're going go say, I'm going to go for a walk. Do I want to bring the stuff and be like, ah, I'm just going to leave it behind. Because it's just too much of a hassle to bring all that stuff with you, but if it's just easy to grab and go. So for my, my bag, I I looked around for sort of, for the right bag for awhile and ended up contracting with a company called flow fold and designed what I thought, the sort of my ideal. Bag would be with them and they then produce that for my store. And so we'd get these really fun prototypes that we then bring out to our nature journal clubs, field trips, where we'd have, you know, 30 nature journalists and we'd kind of, we dissect the bag and we kind of look at it like, you know, different people would try it on and put their stuff in it. Like, no, it doesn't fit this kind of sketchbook. Like I want, I want a pouch here. And so we kind of tweaked it and modified it and kind of came up with a design that I really liked. And so that, that's kind of been my, the, the, the bag that it may not be the right bag for other people, but it's definitely the right bag for me because I got to sort of add features, take features away until I went. This is it.
Danny Gregory:That sounds very nice to have your own customized bag. Very good. I was thinking about John Ruskin, you know, the 19th century. Sort of writer and painter and stuff like that. He, he had a man servant who would carry a stuff and a folding chair and hold an umbrella over him while he painted.
John Muir Laws:Wow. That's
Danny Gregory:yeah. So he painted like in Venice and the, I think he had, at times he had a donkey also just to carry stuff, but you do that.
John Muir Laws:The donkey is that, you know, if, if nothing else you can pet the donkey,
Danny Gregory:the donkey,
John Muir Laws:the donkey, the donkey, give it a carrot. I mean, that would be fun to have a little donkey out there with you. And that would also be a great sort of a conversation starter. I think you should go on to check out your
Danny Gregory:donkey.
John Muir Laws:I think, I think I need a donkey. And I'll, I'll send you I'd love to see what you think of it. I'll, I'll send you one of the, the bags that we made. Oh, effort. Yeah, the I, I found it for the, one of the, the sort of ideas that I have about stuff is that I want to regularly go through my pile of stuff and call it and sort of pick out the stuff that, that I'm not really regularly using. That just kind of keeps the whole system lighter. And so. I find if I have a, the same is true with, with backpacks. If I have a big backpack, when I'm going camping, I will fill, find an excuse to fill, fill up that entire backpack if I have a smaller backpack. And so I'm doing now, most of my backpacking is sort of ultra light backpacking. It's a very small, it's a very lightweight backpack and because it is small and lightweight, I can only put a little bit of stuff in it. And so I'm very selective about what stuff goes in and the, but the minute the, it kind of, you get the bigger backpack, then the bigger backpack needs to be even more strongly reinforced because you're gonna be putting more stuff. You know, back in the day I was, you know, I took proud and I have a 60 pound pack. If I took pride in that, I was like, that's crazy. That's nuts. But
Danny Gregory:that's not, or the donkey
John Muir Laws:I was missing the donkey, the donkey, the donkey will carry my umbrella.
Danny Gregory:Cause I, I remember I went on a trip, my wife and I drove from Seattle to LA and we spent like two weeks driving all the way down the west coast. And I was getting ready to teach a watercolor workshops. I had a whole bunch of like different ideas of different kinds of water clothes I want to try. And people have been sending me all these different water color things to try out and I had water color markers and I had like just all kinds of different things. And so. I ended up getting one of these giant north face duffle bags that has wheels and a ma and like a handle. And I filled because I knew we were renting a car. So I was like, we're going to rent a car. You know, there's no limit to how much I can take as long as you know, I'm with underneath the baggage allowance, tell her that I'm just going to do that. So I brought this into huge bag. My wife was bitterly complaining about the entire time in part, because also it was in the summer. And I thought we're in the summer, it's the west coast of the United States. It's going to be warm. I'm not going to need much. I'll just have some t-shirts and some shorts. Well, it turned out that no it's freezing up there. So I hadn't any
John Muir Laws:your your workshop.
Danny Gregory:Well, the, my workshop, I was going to teach when I came back, it wasn't there. This was just the trip. So we went from Seattle, Portland. San Francisco. And we worked our way down, but a lot of it was, I mean, this is in August. I thought it's August, I'm used to New York August when it's summer, it was terrible. And so I ended up actually going to a thrift store, like the first or second day we got there and buying like a weird hoodie from some high school and wearing it, basically the entire trip. The reason that I didn't have any clothes, really, it was because I had this huge duffel bag full of art supplies. And so I was like, well, I can't take much more with it. So it was a disaster. And then actually for about two years after that, I only ever took an iPad with me when I traveled. So that was, oh, that was kind of the ultimate, the other end of it. But I have to say a lot of times I also like having a lot less just because it's more, it's more creatively challenging, honestly, to have like three pens, you know, Colored pencils. A small, I, lot of times I like to travel with a small moleskin water color book, the smallest one, which is like three by six or something through five. And so you're working in much more limited circumstances and that's gonna make you, you know, figure stuff out and and improvise. It's also fun when you're traveling to be able to have room to go and buy art supplies. So you can go to like weird art supply stores in foreign countries and see stuff. And you, you have an excuse to buy something.
John Muir Laws:Yeah. Th th that, and that ties into the whole idea of, of over choice or choice overload choice overload. When you've got all these different pants, you then end up thinking to yourself like, ah, like, which, oh, this one, or that one, this one, or that one, you know, they've done these kinds of interesting psychological tests where. You know, if you give people, you go up to the buffet and there are 30 different types of salad dressing. We actually are not happier with that. We people end up kind of like, guess I'll use this one, but then you're thinking maybe I would have been happier if I had chosen that other one. But if there's just a few choices there, then you'd be like, oh, this is the kind I like. And then you stick that on your salad and you're happy. So you actually too much choice can paralyze us. And it's so nice when your hand goes down into your little sketch bag and your fingertips touch that pencil. And, you know, there are just three pencils in there and you know which one that is and you pull out the right one rather than having to like that. No, not that one, the whole, do I really want that one? Like, oh, what would I haven't used this one in a while? So you don't want to kind of get parallel it paralyzed by too much choice. So that having that, that Having fewer items out there, I think actually makes us, makes it for a more pleasurable experience. Yeah,
Danny Gregory:absolutely. I mean, for a long time I had, I would work in this mole skin, which was literally the size of my phone. It was, I mean, I could put my phone on top. I have a fairly large phone, but I had that, that I had one pen often it would be this food and suitcase, or it might be like a, kind of a mid range micron, like an oh two or three. I would have a water brush, which we'll talk a bit about in a second. And I would also, I made a little teeny tiny. If you're watching this on video, you can see this was my watercolor set.
John Muir Laws:I'm looking at it a little tiny on like one of the, maybe it's not a mini Altoids tin.
Danny Gregory:It's it's basically that it's, it's like Two inches by one inch. And it is, you know, perfectly serviceable. If you have good quality watercolors, they can, they're pretty dense. And so
John Muir Laws:that will last a little kid. He opens it up. It's got eight Wells, eight little Wells. So can you just hold and has a little
Danny Gregory:bit
John Muir Laws:of liquid,
Danny Gregory:it's usually a days painting easily with good, with good professional level thing. So you take that, that will fit into the watch pocket of your jeans. And then you put the pan and a water brush in your front pocket. You put the sketchbook in your back pocket. You're done. And then you use your jeans to clean your brush. So that's all
John Muir Laws:in your chance to clean your brush. That's good. That's good.
Danny Gregory:Yeah. So you don't need to carry anything. So, so what brush for those of you who don't know is and again, we shouldn't be doing this on video, but I'm going to show it anyway, this, this is a rather dirty one, but it's basically a plastic brush with a, with a soft plastic handle that you can fill with water. Or in this case, I've actually filled it with India ink. And then, you know, you have water with you wherever you go. I mean, that's, it's a transformative tool because it means you don't have to have a water jar that can leak. You don't have to fill it up somewhere. You don't have to carry any of that stuff. You just, you just use your water brush.
John Muir Laws:I absolutely agree this. It is an absolute game changer. And also I think it's a more ecologically It's sort of better way to, to kind of get your, your paint on. So back in the day, when you kind of get that jar of mucky water, you'd bring a little jar with you as you paint, it gets increasingly gunky. And then what do you do when it's gunky is most people just pour it out wherever they are and fill more water in from their canteen? Well, if you're doing painting with cobalts and cadmiums and all these sorts of things, you can't, you've got a little, you just made a little jar of toxic waste
Danny Gregory:and putting it in a trail on a trail or something like
John Muir Laws:that. You're dropping that in the middle of 12 mini Meadows. Ah, right. So what are you going to do? You're going to pack that out really? Probably not. So, but with the water brush what my, my, instead of using my jeans, I will take a. You know, there's a little dryer orphans. You can, you can put, get at a part of a sock and you put a it over your wrist, like a wrist or so I'm right-handed so put those sock on my left hand. So my brush right hand holds my brush. My left hand holds my palette and it has the sock on it. When I want to change colors, I give the brush a squeeze and a wipe on that sock. And I am, I'm good to go. Cleans the brush from the inside. You don't need a ton of water.
Danny Gregory:You put your water through it, you squeeze it a couple times. Pumps water through the brush. Boom. Wipe it off. Yeah. I mean I've seen people use sweat bands, same, same concept, but
John Muir Laws:those, those dry or orphans, those are they're good, actually. Do I have it
Danny Gregory:here? No, this is a purely visual
John Muir Laws:I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll tell instead of show that what for, for SOC 2.0, somebody sent me googly eyes. That I can't, that I attached to the sock. So it also serves as a sock. Puppet,
Danny Gregory:love that. So you can use it as a Trek, birds or something too,
John Muir Laws:because you know, how often are you out there? Think to yourself? Gosh, if I only had a sock puppet right now, you'd be surprised at how often a sock puppet comes in handy when you've actually got a sock puppet with you.
Danny Gregory:Okay. That's very useful. I never thought of that. I have a Welsh pub towel that I usually carry around with me when I don't want to soil my genes. So
John Muir Laws:favorite favorite water brush?
Danny Gregory:Well, I, for a long time, I used the ni GS and in IGI, that was the, that was the one. And then there's the pen tails. And then also recently I've been seeing the Derwin. Different ones. I haven't tried those yet. Yeah. It looks, they're like they look a little bit more substantial. You know, I think a lot of watercolor purists wouldn't like these maybe because the brushes are synthetic, you know, it's not like you have a, you know, beautiful Kolinsky Sable,
John Muir Laws:not serious seven Kolinsky Sable.
Danny Gregory:Right. But nobody really cares that much about it. And you know, I have a 37 Kolinsky brush. I can always throw it in the bag, but I really, in case I run into any watercolor snobs, I can pull it out. But yeah. So so, okay. So what are brushes? So w do you have any, do you see, I mean, I don't really care what the brand is. They don't, I don't, I bought, I bought like cheap, no name ones. They're fine.
John Muir Laws:I, I'm a big booster of like my number one go-to bro. Is the Pentel Aqua wash, large fine point water brush. And so they come in several sizes. I use the large one, which comes snaps to a perfectly sharp point. Cause you can also do a big wash with it. And that, that little water brush makes me so
Danny Gregory:happy. We're away though. I find like I have like a whole jar of them and this one could still be used for something it's like old toothbrushes or something. Right. I
John Muir Laws:find that mine, mine tend not to get old because I'll be out there painting and somebody will come up to me and they'll say like, oh, I'd love that brush here. So just on the spot, you just hand them your brush and you say, yeah, this is an absolute game changer. Here's a couple of things on how it works. Get yourself a little drier, orphan sock, and then do this. And here, this brush is for you. You give them your brush and. Totally made their day. This stranger, who they met by the side of the trail just gave them the ultimate water brush. And you happen to have an extra one inside your kit because you need to go do more painting that day. So you carry some extra mark pens and you carry some extra water brushes. And that is, that is huge. The
Danny Gregory:other sponsored by Pentel yet?
John Muir Laws:No, no, it's not the other my favorite other one is the carrot Tucky, Cora talkie food, a water brush pen with a flat. And that one is so it's you can have a sort of comes as sort of a chisel shaped head. So it's like a wash, almost like a wash
Danny Gregory:brush.
John Muir Laws:Well, it's, it's, it's a, there's a, there's a flat head. It is sort of imagine sort of a chisel shaped brush. And that's cool, but wait, there's more because the, the tip of it has a little plastic feral on it and you can pop that off. So then the whole thing is a big mop head. So it's two brushes in one. Wait, there's more because when you put that little it's sold as a two in one brush, but it's actually three in one, because instead of snapping off that little outside part, if you spin it, then what happens is the tip of it turns into this great crazy squirrel tail, multi headed. Pointed brush that you can use for before for kind of, you know, a hair, detailed texture, grasses, all these sorts of things. And then you can pop that off again, flatten it out. And it goes back to being it's shizzle shaped brush. So it's got in one brush head, these three things, and you're thinking of first people thinking like, you know, when am I going to really use it like a chisel shaped brush? I'm not going to be like drawing bricks with this. No, you're not, but, but you can actually get wonderful very irregular patterns by putting these brushes down and kind of dancing them back and forth. As, as you're you're you're painting, you can get effects that look much more, you've got effects that are much more random than if you're doing it without that sort of chisel chisel effect. That's yes, it's this three in one brush and they, they, they sell it as two in one, they don't the people who sell this brush don't know about that kind of twist the head and turn the point into this multi sort of like imagine if you a squirrel put its little toe into a light socket and you know, all the hairs were standing out, you kind of get this sort of all the hair is standing out effect by twisting the tip of that
Danny Gregory:recommend that you put squirrels feet into electrical.
John Muir Laws:No squirrels were harmed in the production of this podcast.
Danny Gregory:So here's
John Muir Laws:another one indoors being
Danny Gregory:another tool we haven't talked about, which I don't know if you use it all, but it is a big one for me is the dip pen. I don't want you
John Muir Laws:to have dip pen chops. I would love to hear about your experience with depends how you use those, what you use those for and what, so, so, so tell me, sort of break this down for me. Why do I want to dip pen? Cause my brain jumps to like, do I want a bottle of ink out there with me? I'm gonna be spilling my ink. And then so
Danny Gregory:the desk, no, those are all legitimate questions. So I mean, depends been used for thousands of years and they people still use them and there's a lot of reasons for it. So I dip pen is a metal nib stuck into usually a wooden handle. And there are thousands of variations in the types and materials nib with snips usages. Again, it's like this really deep mature category. So there's all these different special uses. A lot of them exist in the calligraphy world, calligraphy and lettering because you can, you know, get effects and use nips for all different kinds of things. The nearby recommend that people try and probably we'll stick with it's called the gene nib and it is zebra actually makes gene Hibbs it's called G because the side of it is kind of G shaped. It has these like little prongs that stick out that make a Jesus. And it's a, it's a good nip to start with because it is it is pretty easy to control. That's I think a lot of the times people's fears about depends is you can't control it, splatters you. Can't
John Muir Laws:what I envision with.
Danny Gregory:So the dip pen is first of all, to draw with India, ink is just so beautiful. I mean, the India ink. India, ink black. It's such, it's a such a black line. It's so next level in terms of the blackness of it, it's also complete when it's dry, it's it's waterproof. The genius, you can get super fine lines. And then with a bit of poll, you can get a really big fat line and everything in between. So it gives you that incredible flexibility. It's also really, really responsive to your hands. So in some ways it can feel like a living thing. Like it has a responsiveness, it's like a living thing. I, I feel like I love. And so many artists who I love. I have always drawn with depends comic book artists and illustrators and cartoonists have always used. Depends is because there, and again, that's using them, you know, usually at a drawing table or indoors, you know, so then you have the whole, what do I do in the field thing? I don't draw with them that much, but I write with them all the time. So when I write with a dip pen, the writing is just beautiful, because again, you can get incredibly expressive lines. And to me, it's like the finishing touch to my journal pages is always going in and writing with the pen. So when it comes to working in the field one thing that I've got is a block of wood square block of wood that has four fat holes drilled into it. And in each hole is a little kind of cartridge with a screw cap. So it's probably holds. You know, half an ounce of ink and you unscrew it and you have it in the wooden blocks. So it's not going to tip over. And because it's in this plastic thing, it's, it's fine. And then you can dip the pen. You just need to dip the pen into the, into the ink and it works fine. And it's, and you can use that anywhere. It's, you know, you can carry it in your pocket. You can carry just the nib in your pocket, just the thing in your pocket. But it's also, you know, depends are really inexpensive, you know, and a nib costs like a buck or two to handle cost, maybe four or five bucks. And you know, you can get them in lots of different places, but once you get into it, there's so many. It's like a whole elaborate world that you can get into throwing with Japan, but still, maybe
John Muir Laws:start for the starter, like me and my genius,
Danny Gregory:who said the genius. I don't think you'll ever need anything, but the gene, honestly, it does so much. And you know, you buy, you buy a package of them. They come like eight or 10 in a box because they don't, you, you want to change them every month or two, they look kind of like razorblades, you want to change them. And it's, you know, it takes a bit of a bit of practice to learn how to pull a line, to draw a line. Sometimes if you're doing it, the wrong angle can kind of stammer and, you know, get away from that a bit. Yeah. I mean, I personally love the splatters to me. That's part of the fun of it. So, you know, I think it's it's if, if you can spend. You know, a day or two practicing. And also the great thing about it is like, if you want to learn how to draw with a dip pen, there are really great drawing instruction books that were written a hundred years ago that are completely relevant. You know, there's, there's, there's
John Muir Laws:some really drawing manuals are so
Danny Gregory:brilliant. Exactly. So you can look at those and you're part of that. You feel like you're part of this continuity, you know, you're not just using the newest dang fangled thing, you know, it's and honestly, there are people who draw with CRO quills, which is a very fine type of nib, but also there are people who literally take a feather and cut the end of it and make it into a nib. You know, you just cut it at an angle, you split it and then it's, it's in the, it is a pen. So what could be cooler than drawing a bird with its feather,
John Muir Laws:with an actual Quill?
Danny Gregory:I think to think about it. I mean, it's, it also slows you down in some ways, which I think improves your drone. It also has a built-in breathing mechanism because you dip your pen, you draw and runs out and then you go back and you dip. So it is force forces, pauses, which I think are also helpful in your
John Muir Laws:drawings. So it just reminds me of kind of, part of the journaling kit of one of my real watercolor inspirations is a woman named Lori Brigham. And she will she, part of her kit is, is a pocket knife and she'll get out there and she'll find, you know she'll be in a certain kind of forest and she'd pick up a twig. She'll widdle, a little nib for herself. And she'll dip that branch into the social, draw that forest with that forest. And there's there's there's there's. There's something really wonderful about that.
Danny Gregory:I love the quality of it too. Like if you look at van Gogh drawings, he did them all with a read pen, you know, and they have this kind of like, there's a certain kind of bluntness to a read pen. It's not flexible at all. And you constantly having to redeploy it doesn't have a reservoir that holds much similar to your friend, drawing with a branch or a twig. I have a friend who draws with a chopstick similar kind of thing. He just dips it in. And another thing you can do with a dip pen is if you can take, if you have a small bottle of ink, you take some gauze and you wrap roll the gauze in and you stuff it into the ink bottle. And so again, that's a way of not of it, it won't tip over and flood, but you can still get enough ink out of it every time. So it's just sort of a, you know, a way of controlling it. Yeah. So let's, let's move on and talk about colored pencils. Do you use colored pens?
John Muir Laws:I think Kelly pencils are great. The and either as a standalone thing or put down a layer of watercolor, let that water color dry. You gotta let that water color dry, and then go over the water color with those colored pencils allows you to get another level of rich detail and texture on top of the saturated color that you got with your watercolor,
Danny Gregory:right? Yeah. It's great to have. It's great to have that have that wash and it fills in like the lines. So you don't necessarily have to like scrub your whole colored pencil over. You can have the, as you say, the texture quality of the, of the pencil. And yet it's got a background of color, which is so nice or someone's of the contrast in color to,
John Muir Laws:and the, this big secret is let that page dry completely. Cause if it's even just a little bit damp, then your paper, your pencil, instead of going across the surface. Leaving little particles of, of, of pencil color. It's just going to emboss down into the paper and mess with your paper, texture and surface. And you'll be sad. Think I don't like these two together, but once it's dry, it just works so well on top of that watercolor
Danny Gregory:do use watercolor
John Muir Laws:pencils. I've messed with watercolor pencils. Some might my big beef with a watercolor pencils is that very often I'll I will mix a color looking at the pencils and then when I hit it with water, it turns into something so much more kind of vibrant. totally like I did not see that as not what I expected that to be. The brick door pencils are they Derwent? Albert. Watercolor pencils. Those ones tend to favor Castile. I think they tend to be a little bit less surprised color change on me, but still that, that bothers me. So my, my work around with that when I, when I do use watercolor pencils and sometimes, sometimes I do, but the, what I used to do, which didn't work for me is I would essentially do a colored pencil drawing and then hit that colored pencil drawing with the water. And then these big changes would happen in any details you put in just got destroyed and you're sad. But where I have had success with it is to sort of think about it in stages sort of stage one, lay in some local. And where I will use those colored pencils, just like a colored pencil, put in sort of a coat of color, hit that with my water brush and liquefy the color. Then let that dry then come back on top of that dried coat that blocked in that color and now draw detail on it. But don't hit that detail with water here. I'm doing any color correction as well. Don't hit that final version with watercolor because of the surprises that it gives me. So I do like watercolor pencil. When I first can block in color, hit that with water, make a base coat, then use it as dry pencil. On top of that, what's your experience with it?
Danny Gregory:I just had a watercolor pencil workshop at sketchbook school. We just had, we had a woman who is the president of the sort of. Divisional part of the work of the pencil artist, association of America, something like that it's called anyway. She told us all kinds of things, which most of which I'm not going to give away in this podcast, but they were pretty fascinating, but definitely you know, she talked about different ways of activating the water, the water color pencil. So you do have more control of it, layering it, the sequence of colors that you put down. In other words, you can't just slap down any color, like with regular water colors, you know, you might want to start lighter and then build your way up to dark. And you know, so there's, there's, there, there is definitely an art to it. It is an incredible medium. I mean, the things that she does, you realize, like, if you know what you're doing, you can do just about anything with these things. I think the vibrancy of the colors would attracts me the most to it. I love Derwin ink. Colored pencils. They also have these kind of sticks that you can get. And that color is just, you know, short of a marker. It's about the brightest, most intense colors you can get. I really love that, but I learned so much from her that, that I need to now apply and practice with to see how you build and build and build. And then also how you use erasers as another tool to use creatively, not to erase stuff, but to like knock things back to open up you know, light areas and do variations. And she also did spend a lot of time on doing like a final Polish to the drawing that made huge differences, like adding darks and sharpening things up and sharpening things. The just became almost photographic. It was really extraordinary. And. I, yeah, I learned a huge amount of that. So that's that I feel like that's a medium that I've played with for years, but I now realize if I applied myself to it, I could really focus on it. I could take it to the next level. I could make
John Muir Laws:it into a and have all my kind of experience with it has just been by trial and error. And
Danny Gregory:same here. Same here. That's that's and that's, that's what happens when he, when you learn from a pro and you go, oh that's how you do that thing. Oh, I had no idea that that's what that was. And then, then you can do it. So yes, she taught us a lot about that. I mean, I think I, I like also combining lots of media into the same thing. So taking something like doing watercolor we have an artist who's taught for us a number of times named Ian family and he does watercolor wash and then he'll do. He'll take like a gray brush marker. And he'll use that for adding tone on top of the watercolor. And then he'll use a range of different kinds of line making pens, fine liners to kind of make get deeper and deeper and he'll just keep layering stuff and things get more and more interesting, more and more detail comes out of it then going in with like a white pencil or a white gel marker and adding more highlights. It's really this process of layering that can transform an ordinary drawing into something really.
John Muir Laws:And you bring up there, the white pencil and the white gel pens. Those are also, those are kind of in the part of my kit that I try to keep at my fingertips. So I've got two sections, I've got the stuff which I use 90% of the time. And then sort of deeper in the kit. There is a zipper bag that has. Everything else. And the, so my hands go in and they can pick that little handful of pencils. One of the things that's in there is the white gel pen and the the white Prismacolor pencil. I'll use those just to add a little bit of light on any subjects that I do once the drawings essentially completed sort of last step for me is often to kind of come in and I think of those as sort of being you know, light captured in wax or ink, and then you'd come and just sort of be the light and you can put those in, you can turn the light off,
Danny Gregory:turn the lights on. It's like you can put a drop of a highlight into an eye and suddenly it comes alive. Right. So, and the kind of thing that if you were trying to like leave white space, white paper by, you know, no, but you just hit, hit it with a gel marker. Yeah. It's it's alive. It's it's really cool. Another thing I've been quite into is watercolor markers. I don't know if you've ever tried those but
John Muir Laws:zero experience with those. So yeah.
Danny Gregory:So Winsor Newton makes a nice line of them. I also like eco line makes these brush pens that are just so juicy. And again, because they're watercolor, they don't bleed through your page, like a regular alcohol based marker. Does their water color. Yeah. Yeah, of course. So, so, and although there is there is a type of book sketchbook called render Ren, Dr. Which is you can draw on a Sharpie on it and it doesn't bleed through it. It's designed it's it's, you can't really use wet media on it, but it is designed for that. But these, these what color markers, you can layer them. You can do all kinds of things that you can do with water color. So you can draw with it just like with a watercolor pencil, where are you? Activate it and blend it with another color. It's also just a pure color, so you can lay down like a flat area that really easily, it works like a marker. So I think having two or three of those in your kit is not a bad idea,
John Muir Laws:but
Danny Gregory:I would think like having, you know, greens for foliage or something like that would be smart. You know, or having maybe you know, like the pain pain's gray marker. I love that so much. It's, it's really beautiful to, to draw with. And it's also just, you know, pain's grades is the most beautiful gray
John Muir Laws:anything. So these, these are who makes these watercolor markers.
Danny Gregory:Well, the watercolor markers are made by Winsor and Newton. So, you know, they know, they know water color. And and then this other brand that I was talking about before, it's called echo line E C O L I N E. And they make a whole line of these brush pens that are there. The company that owns them is called Royal talents, which is a German company. But those echo lines really fun to just draw loosely with, if you like doing big loose kind of playful drawings, they're
John Muir Laws:really fun. They've got the Payne's gray one. Pain's
Danny Gregory:great. Is Winsor Newton.
John Muir Laws:That's the Windsor. Yeah. Great color.
Danny Gregory:Yeah. I mean, I have, again, I'm not, I'm not showing these for those of you who are just listening, but they're pro marker watercolor pens. They have a brush tip and they have a fine tip. And I really liked this. All right, let's talk about paper, cause we've
John Muir Laws:gone to, I want us to just swing back into the land of penciled them just for a moment, because I found that there are two pencils that are, you know, what, when I recommend that people kind of, you know, get some colored pencil, I suggested they get a small set of colored pencils. And then I suggest that there are two pencils. It's two specific pencils that people pick up that I find are just such game changers. And there are two Winsor Newton pencils. And what is the black grape color? And the other is the grade lavender color. And they're both kind of muted, grayish purples, the black grape being much darker and the grade lavender being the lighter version of that. And so for putting in just like if you had a generic kind of go-to, I think I need to share. These two colors, they play so well with other colors. You can put in the shadow with black grape and then put blue over it and there's a shadow in the blue. So for all my dark value things, I'll be dropping that black grape, a lot of it into sort of shadow curious
Danny Gregory:grape.
John Muir Laws:Yes, black grape. And the other fun part of that is because on those Prismacolor pencils, the names of the pencils are also in France, French, you will then be carrying a pencil that says raising the war,
Danny Gregory:and you just said, Prismacolor. I thought, I thought it was Windsor. No,
John Muir Laws:no, sorry. Prismacolor Chris
Danny Gregory:Winsor. Newton. He's a Prismacolor,
John Muir Laws:probably Winsor Newton on my mind
Danny Gregory:pencils. And I was like, I don't have anything like that. So yeah,
John Muir Laws:no. So this is, yeah, this is a Prismacolor
Danny Gregory:pencil. So black grape. And what was the other one grade
John Muir Laws:lavender. So if I'm putting a shadow in, on something that is yellow or really light valued, I will use the grade lavender and it plays with like very nicely with yellows. You know, if you, it, it doesn't turn them muddy. It doesn't turn them green. It
Danny Gregory:Paynes gray is.
John Muir Laws:That's what, when you mentioned Payne's gray and kind of loving by the way, was the pain scraped. So the pain's gray, that's the watercolor marker. The pro marker pro marker does. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to, I'm going to have to go geek out with that. And but, but these are my two suggestions for, cause also with this black grape one, if you do, if you, if you'd like to just sort of pick up a Prismacolor pencil and make a sketch with it, and you usually do that with black, well, you can do that with black grape and then it's black ish, but it's also got this a little bit of purple to it. So it is. It just looks really cool. And then you can go over that and drop other colors in it. It will turn into good sort of background, depth, dark colors. So you can essentially make a value sketch with it and then colorize that as sort of an easy approach to painting or drawing with your colored pencils.
Danny Gregory:Right? So we've, we are kind of long, but I think this is interesting. I was thinking like we could probably just do like a huge series. We could probably do an entire podcast, but art supplies, which we're not going to do, but oh, and also here's another was to play later on. Possibly we can come back to it. So another one another thing I really like, I like drawing. I like to paint with those. I like to paint with, I used to use pH Dr. pH Martins, transparent watercolors, which are like liquid water calls that come in a bottle with us eyedropper. Now I'm very into the Windsor Newton drawing inks, which you can use similarly, really, again, really intense colors. And you can use them like we were talking with watercolor can put that down as your base. And then you can put colored pencil on top of it. Another thing I also like a lot of Sumi ink which is a Japanese ink. It comes in liquid form, but it also comes in these beautiful blocks. It's like a solid block. Yeah. And that's another thing I used to carry around with me in my pocket when I just had like, Jeans pocket thing, because you take that and you can literally rub it on the sidewalk and put a look, take your water brush, and you can use, you use the sidewalk as a little pallet. And Sumi ink is like a solid block of ink, but it's also, to me, it has a really nice quality it's like slightly warmer than India ink. It is, and you can really dilute it and get it to be very, very thinked and just layer and layer and layer it on. So some of the ink can just be like too aggressive in. Kind of ruined the party by being super black,
John Muir Laws:blue,
Danny Gregory:right? Yeah, exactly. But so me ink is just, you know, it's, it's dignified and gentle and it's really nice. And you can also use that with a dip panel with a brush. So
John Muir Laws:that's, I love that the thought of you sitting there on the sidewalk with it, it's kind of grinding a little bit there and dipping into that little puddle that you've made
Danny Gregory:part of what I like about urban sketching is this using what's there? You know, I've done paintings like using. Mud or using you know, like my friend Dan price, who we talked about last time, he, he taught me this idea of using the water from the place you are as in your drawing. So like, you're, you know, even like if you're on the beach, you could use salt water and that'll have some, like, that'll have some effect on your art supplies too, you know, that making, you know, or if you're in a cafe, use a glass of wine to, to paint with you know, that you use your coffee to paint with that. That is part of the process of bringing your, bringing your, you know, your moment into your sketchbook. So let's talk about about sketchbooks. I know that you are a producer of sketchbooks among other things
John Muir Laws:in his sketchbook. I don't want it to kind of create a kind of put the features that I thought were really useful. It just sort of like the sketch bag There are, there are certain sketchbooks that so I will arch an alternate between the one that I've, that I made. And there's a few others that I'll mention that are also available. But I wanted something that would be relatively small size, but not too small. So I always recommend people go as large with your journal as you will realistically regularly bring in with you into the field. Because you can then spread more ideas out on a bigger page, but if it then gets so big that you just don't have it with you, then the journal that you have is better than the one that you don't. So I wanted rounded corners. I wanted a little wind bands to prevent the pages from flopping around. I wanted a paper that would take water color really well. I wanted toned paper as well as white paper. And I also wanted to have resource sheets in the back with some tips on drawing on, on, on drawing and also thinking like a naturalist. So how, you know, having a. You know, built into the journal. So you can go like, oh, this is this many centimeters long or tools to help you estimate percent cover or degrees of arc across the sky. That's sort of the science geek in me wanting to look for ways to quantify things. And it's, it's kind of gets your brain also then to look at whatever phenomenon you're playing with in a slightly different way. So that little journal I find, oh, also wanted a, an index in the back. So you can number your pages and then, then say, you know, page this through this, this was when I was in Tanzania and this, through this, this is this. And, you know, here's where you're going to find the warthog. And then the cover one that you can draw and paint on to in addition to the pages on the inside of the journal, as you're kind of going along, you, everyone saw your doodling or drawing on the outside cover of it, then the cover of the journal also becomes kind of an index of what's inside.
Danny Gregory:Fantastic. I like, I mean, I like the index a lot too. That's that's a cool feature. And do you also have a little envelope in the back to put,
John Muir Laws:I thought of doing that? But then the cost increase in the book to put in the envelope. I was thinking like for that, you know, somebody really wants an envelope they're better off gluing in their own, then spending this much money to have me glue in an envelope for
Danny Gregory:that. Cause it's like the feature that you do see a lot of sketchbooks now is like the little envelope that you put stuff in. I don't know what people put in. I put in like a femora, usually from the.
John Muir Laws:Putting, at least from my experience in trying to get this, get the journal right. Is that putting in the envelope envelope raise the production price of the thing to kind of a nuisance level. And so I decided not to have that, that, that feature, but that was something that originally wanted the other favorite sketchbooks Hart. I like, I prefer hard bound sketchbooks to spiral bound
Danny Gregory:ones. Definitely.
John Muir Laws:But the, the toned paper ones that Strathmore makes, they make these gray and brown toned paper. Oh, those are fun.
Danny Gregory:Yeah. I've had a lot of those, that whole series, that line of the sort of soft cover ones are nice too. You know, it's like, they're not there. They're still kind of squidgy. They're not, it's not like a cheap thing. You know, the ones I'm talking about, they're almost like, like a, like a leathery sort of a nice, and they have a watercolor one that's really nice in that series. Honolulu also makes a a cup of Chino and the gray that are really nice, hard bound books. I also like the Fabriano Vanette SIA, which has had this kind of red and white cover, really nice books with sort of looks like little bricks on it, little bricks with like a red sign, gorgeous, really nice, like really solid watercolor paper. I filled dozens of those and it comes in three or four different sizes. That, that is really nice. I like Yeah. I mean, I've also made books. Have you ever done that? Do you have no, I, I never
John Muir Laws:have the w four for while I was using these things where I would take, I would take paper, I would punch it with a comb binding and I had something called a contract in spiral notebook where I would put a little curled plastic coil through clip those together.
Danny Gregory:And they'll do that for
John Muir Laws:you too. That's right. They'll punch it all for you. Okay. Yeah.
Danny Gregory:I mean, I, I, when I first started doing sketchbooks, I really, to me, the book, the book ness of it was really important and I was fascinated. I've always been fascinated by bookbinding and there really wasn't. There was like, you know, those ones we used to have in high school that were like black and they had this sort of not very good white paper in it. There was sort of like the, every creative kid carried around those blocks. Kind of, you know, you know what I'm talking about and they still make those, but that was kind of like, that was sort of it, there wasn't really watercolor of sketchbooks much. And so I started taking classes in bookbinding and I learned how to bind books and I would make my own covers and use like marbleized paper and do end papers and stuff like that. And I would make special ones for certain trips. Like I did one to death valley and I made like a map of Las Vegas and that area, and I burned it a bit and I bound that into be the end papers and stuff. Oh,
John Muir Laws:that's fun. Did that have the, the, the crashed airplane in it?
Danny Gregory:That's the one with the crashed airplane. That's great. And then and I also, I actually, at one point I, I met a guy who was an old book binder and he used to do. Just really, he wasn't, he was more of a, well, he would like do work for libraries where like he would bind all the magazines, you know, like when you go to the library of all the bad things. So he would do that kind of thing. And I said to him, could you make me like the ultimate sketchbook? And he was like, sure, whatever you want. So I ended up having this sketchbook that was had like 10 different kinds of paper in it. Like different had some like really heavy water color paper. It had some tone paper, all this different paper, and then it was bound. It was in red kind of simulated leather with the number. I think it was like my 43rd sketchbook at that point. So it was debossed in gold letters on the outside. It was really, it was big and chunky. It was about two inches thick. And I barely used it. It was like too good. And it was too big. This is like, and I forget it. It was, it was like if somebody had given me a Ferrari and I was like, y'all drive it like three times, but I'm not really gonna drive it to work.
John Muir Laws:Right. And isn't, I think that, that, that happens to a lot of us that will sometimes if you, we invest in even some art supplies, like the, really, this is the palette, this is the brush, this is the journal, but then it becomes kind of precious to good tan and yeah. Too good to use. And it's no, it's now kind of a fetish instead of being the tool.
Danny Gregory:Right. That's true. It's true. It's like people who, you know, I mean, I think it's true in every category that there are things that are like, you know like when. It was a gun. Oh yeah. The 40 do remember the movie, the 40 year old Virgin where there's I didn't see it. Well, Steve Carell, like among his geekiness, is he, like, he collects action figures and they're like these action figures that are in the original packaging, you know, that whole phenomenon, like, right. You never touch it. You never open it. You know, you have records that you never play and all that kind of stuff. And it's possible in the world of sketch booking to fall into that, you know, like, and I've had people say that to me, like I bought it. I bought a really cool sketchbook, but I I'm afraid to use it, or I, I'm not good enough to use it. Yeah. We're similarly like buying, you know, a set of like really good watercolors and, you know, it's nonsense. I mean, I think we should wrap this up, but I was just gonna say like, I, I think, and this might be an ironic way to wrap it up is to say in the end art supplies don't really matter. You know, it doesn't really matter what you use. You can use that motel six pen, you can use it on like, you know, Xerox paper you can use your kids crayons. You can, what really matters in the end is using it. Don't hoard art supplies. They're making more of them all the time. They're not really that expensive. If you think about them, even the most expensive set of watercolors is, you know,$150, let's say for a really great set of four colors, it's going to last you for five years, you know, in the end, it's not, none of this stuff is particularly expensive, but it's also not important. It's really it's what matters is, is doing it, doing it, making stuff, drawing as often as possible, drawing everything under the sun, having your sketchbook as your companion. Challenging yourself, pushing into new areas, finding new things, to draw new techniques, new artists to love, but none of the rest of it matters. It's just fun. It's an ad. It's an adjunct to it, but it's not essential. So in other words, you just wasted an hour and a half of your time listening to us talk about art supplies. That don't matter.
John Muir Laws:Well, it does matter, I'd say in the, to the point that, you know, sometimes having that tool in your hand, that feels really good. It makes a bunch of logistics easier. You're like, oh, I, you know, if you were trying to do watercolors and you're using the brush that comes in the praying set, you know, that good luck to you. It will be challenging. Yeah. As long as having a different tool will make some things a little bit logistically easier and sometimes kind of, you know, gearing yourself up to go do things also motivates you, but if it then starts to feel precious, then gear gets in the way. And the most important tools are the ones that you use the most important tools are the ones that you actually have with you. And so just be there with those and give yourself permission to explore with different media, to play with different sorts of things, to use the mustard in the diner, to put the yellow on the breast of the Meadowlark. And you'll discover that, you know, some years later it turns around by the way. And but, but that's, that's, that's kind of fun.
Danny Gregory:I think that's what we discovered interestingly with. Cell phones and taking photographs. Right? Remember when people used to get really fiddly about cameras and all the kind of the right gear to have and all that kind of stuff. And now people take beautiful photographs with their cameras. Their cameras happen to have really great technology, so you can take good pictures, but the most important thing is they're in your pocket and you take pictures all the time. So you take, I mean, I think if you said to yourself, you know what I want to take, I want to do as much drawing as I do photography. But of course, I'm going to do it at the speed of drawing, but, you know, I mean, we all take pictures of everything all the time, just as a souvenir or as like, oh, this is a beautiful sunset or, oh, I want to take a picture of that receipt. Or, you know, here's a picture of a screw that I needed to replace it though at the hardware store, all those kinds of things to have that be your attitude towards drawing, I think will make you enjoy drawing that much more. And again, it doesn't really matter what you use. It doesn't matter if you have the perfect camera. What matters is that you took the perfect is you that you took a picture and Robert Campos, a great legendary photographer. He always said, what is the, when they asked him, what is the best camera to have? And he said, the one that you with a camera gonna use, and he said, the one that you have with you,
John Muir Laws:it's not the it, you know, if you, if you want to make this beautiful pictures, the secret is to make lots of pictures, same with the photographs and. Angela Adams took lots of crummy photographs, lots of photographs. And then you're able to choose from those and say like, look, this is the one I'm gonna put up on the wall. Pencil miles
Danny Gregory:and so miles. Right, exactly. So, all right. Cool. Well, good. Well, this has been fun. We've managed to delve deep into yet another subject of potential interest. I don't know. We'll see. But I think, and maybe we'll come back and talk about this some more. I mean, I would say another thing to you, the watcher, the listener, or the participant, let us know what you think. Put a comment on YouTube, let us, or email us and let us know what you think because. That will help us to do future ones and to give you what you want for us to talk about. We can talk about obviously just about anything for forever. So help focus us. I think we did pretty well. We stuck on topic. We did. We stuck on topic. I'm proud of us for that. I'm impressed. Yeah, it's good. So, all right, well until next time, thanks again, John. It was really fun talking to you.
John Muir Laws:Thank you, Danny. This has been, this has been a ball and I've got also, I know it's not about the stuff, but I'm going to go play with some stuff because you now got me curious about it. Yeah. We've
Danny Gregory:earned the right by the way. We've been doing this for a long time. So now we're allowed to play with this stuff. So in our dotage, exactly, you'd have to provide.