Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Cheese, Chocolate & Caran d'Ache

Yesterday, I found myself in the vicinity of a Blick Art Supply with time to kill and no kids in tow. O Happy Day. I went down every aisle at a leisurely pace. Such a luxury to just drink in all the goodies. Encaustic paints and clay and papers and brushes of every type and shape. Is there anything more wonderful than the potential of new art supplies?


I bought an etching needle, which I'd been meaning to buy since the printmaking class I took at Arrowmont. Now I can make dry points or defend myself with the same versatile implement. Etch this evildoers!

By far the most exciting thing I discovered was the a la carte Caran d'Ache display. (If you are a history buff, hope to be a contestant on Jeopardy or just want to add to your already overflowing font of useless knowledge cut and paste this URL in your browser - this thing refuses to be hot linked, maybe we weren't supposed to know http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caran_d'Ache)

I have the set of 30 Neocolor II which is divine, but can one ever have too many CdAs? I think not! These wonderful, delicious sticks of joy aren't cheese or chocolate, but they are Swiss-made and good enough to eat.

I selected a handful (not all the colors are pictured here) bringing my count to 36 with the lovely additions of Bordeaux, Olive, Pink, Indian Red, Raspberry Red and Azurite Blue. How did I live before Debbi introduced me to the wonderful world that is water soluble crayon? It was not living, merely existing, really.

Accept no imitations. I tried to go cheap. It ain't worth it. Go Swiss or go home.



8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Even though I don't have a clue about the things that you found other than they are pretty in color as I am not an artist, I am SO glad you had some quiet shopping time all to yourself! Now that I understand!
;-)

xo,
Kim

Debbi Crane said...

The sight of those gives me the heavens-open-angels-singing sound!

My new set of 30 is on the way from Mr. Blick!

e.beck.artist said...

were you at the nice new clean vast dick blick in roswell? ..... that store makes me hear angels singing!

Cheryl Prater said...

e: yes, the new one in Roswell. I sped past the Super Target and made right for the sale canvas. 4 x 4 for 98 cents!

Deb Silva said...

I love these things too! and - You're it again - I'm nominating you for the "Rockin Girl Blogger" award - get your copy and paste finger ready~
woohoo!

Anonymous said...

I went and ordered The Neo color set of 30 and a Burnt Sienna encaustic paint block. Wish we had a Dick Blick. You'd think with Ringling Art School our area would be jammin with art supply stores. It isn't. Thanks for the link. I heard something like angels too!

ps I don't know what mail you are referring too- am email? no snail mail either... tell me more

Queenie said...

There's a special place in my house for both Blick and Caran D'Ache. My issue is my inability to get out of a supply shop without a weird pen (and by weird I mean that it must either be an odd color,or a revolutionary new type of ink that looks the same, but somehow costs exponentially more than the average Bic) or a notepad. I love a good notepad.

Queenie said...

I meant special place in my HEART in my previous comment. The lesson learned is to refrain from writing comments while hopelessly exhausted.