Art Box

I posted recently about Lilla Roger's Assignment Bootcamp and the "mobile studio" I was inspired to make. Well, it's done! It's officially called the Art Box. Now I have somewhere to keep work and supplies tidy and schlep them around the house to be available whenever I have a few minutes to work on something.

I started with a newish sturdy cardboard box and painted it yellow with some old house paint. I have to mention this yellow paint because it was -I SWEAR- 15 years old!! I guess I had the lid on that can really tight. It moved across the country with me twice. But from the price tag on it, I know I bought it at the Salida hardware store near my house when I lived there eons ago. 

Then I painted it fun colors and added a nice strap as a handle so I can carry it with one hand. It turned out a bit gaudy, but hey, I'm not going to redo it. It is a cardboard box after all.

Putting the supplies in was fun. So far I have my sketch book, rulers, pencils and colored pencils, a folder of cut printmaking paper, a piece of masonite as a table surface, watercolor & gouache, paintbrushes, homemade stamps and stamp pads, and my linocut tool. 

I've ordered some new linoleum in precut 5x7 pieces. It's called Richeson Clear Carve Linoleum. I decided to get it because there is a contest. If you use their linoleum, you can enter your piece and win an etching press! Why not?! Also, because it's clear, you don't have to do a lot of work transferring an image. You can lay the block over a drawing and see right through it. And one of my main goals is to learn to work faster and simpler.

I made a bunch of new little stamps recently and it was fun playing with them late at night. I want to try and do small editions of prints by stamping a background pattern and then printing a black and white single linocut over the top. I THINK it will look neat. So the stamps and clear linoleum are for that experiment. Yay for experiments! Yay for the Art Box!