Cleaning my drawers, I found this Japanese
Mini color pencil set I got in San Francisco at the
Kinokuniya stationery store a few years ago.
While its components (pencils, eraser, sharpener) are certainly functional, this is clearly more of a collector's novelty than a sketching set meant to be used given its retail price and scarcity. Also tiny pencils and big hands would be a recipe for cramps. I've spotted similar mini sets of 24-36 tiny pencils packed in CD jewel cases in the gift sections of
museums, Borders,
Barnes & Noble, and Michaels stores. Thus they could be used for postcard-size sketches by artists with slender fingers and skillful children. But to actually get some service out of this mini set with my big paws for hands, I had to find another application.
Caran D'Ache Museum watercolor leads users' tip: something clicked while observing closely the tiny pencils and their sharpener. The mini pencils
were 3.8 mm in diameter, thus this card case would be ideal for carrying 1.75" Museum watercolor lead pieces for a really
compact 12 color watercolor pencil kit (choosing two sets of primary colors plus some extra greens and earth colors from the Museum range of 18 colors for a well-rounded palette). The mini sharpener open design also makes it easier to sharpen the watercolor leads and collect the shavings for later use (to make concentrated washes or dropping flakes of watercolor pigment on top of wet paper for special effects).
The original
Caran D'Ache Museum box set is rather bulky to be a regular travel sketching kit, so it was limited to studio use. I had tried carrying these watercolors leads loose in tins and in a glass tube before, but they ended up getting soiled from rubbing against each other. The
Mini Staff card case open slots do a fine job of keeping each colored lead piece separate during transport. Now this portable card set is the lightest of my collection of watercolor boxes, and I will test how well it performs on the road on an upcoming trip to Toronto and Niagara Falls.
Cleaning my drawers, I found this Japanese Mini color pencil set I got in San Francisco at the Kinokuniya stationery store a few years ago.
While its components (pencils, eraser, sharpener) are certainly functional, this is clearly more of a collector's novelty than a sketching set meant to be used given its retail price and scarcity. Also tiny pencils and big hands would be a recipe for cramps. I've spotted similar mini sets of 24-36 tiny pencils packed in CD jewel cases in the gift sections of museums, Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Michaels stores. Thus they could be used for postcard-size sketches by artists with slender fingers and skillful children. But to actually get some service out of this mini set with my big paws for hands, I had to find another application.
Caran D'Ache Museum watercolor leads users' tip: something clicked while observing closely the tiny pencils and their sharpener. The mini pencils were 3.8 mm in diameter, thus this card case would be ideal for carrying 1.75" Museum watercolor lead pieces for a really compact 12 color watercolor pencil kit (choosing two sets of primary colors plus some extra greens and earth colors from the Museum range of 18 colors for a well-rounded palette). The mini sharpener open design also makes it easier to sharpen the watercolor leads and collect the shavings for later use (to make concentrated washes or dropping flakes of watercolor pigment on top of wet paper for special effects).
The original Caran D'Ache Museum box set is rather bulky to be a regular travel sketching kit, so it was limited to studio use. I had tried carrying these watercolors leads loose in tins and in a glass tube before, but they ended up getting soiled from rubbing against each other. The Mini Staff card case open slots do a fine job of keeping each colored lead piece separate during transport. Now this portable card set is the lightest of my collection of watercolor boxes, and I will test how well it performs on the road on an upcoming trip to Toronto and Niagara Falls.
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2 comments:
Very clever chsnge over to utilize the better pigments in the Caran d'Ache leads. Great idea! I have the Caran d'Ache leads only I haven't used them much. I'm always afraid they'll get broken.
Thank you. Learned early on to accept their inevitable breakage with the brittle 548 Genuine Umber lead that kept breaking straight from the Fixpencil. Also since every fragment is usable as a source of richly pigmented wash, I keep a palette with individually labeled mini jars to collect and save watercolor lead shavings and small fragment separate from each other.
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