Art store field trip!

I’m not an artist and I never have been, but today I walked into Blick Art Materials in Dearborn, Michigan. I was there because they supposedly carry Rhodia pads and I’m desperately wanting something that isn’t a staple bound notebook. I imagined walking in and finding every Rhodia imaginable but alas, they only had a small supply of the staple bound books. To top it off, I accidentally bought a graph paper #16 which bums me out even further.

Besides my Rhodia hunt, I was there for another purpose. I decided that I was going to buy a sketchbook and some pencils or charcoal and then force myself to draw. If you’ve read my blog much, you know that I’m currently struggling to open the creative side of my brain which seems to have been walled off in recent years. I can’t seem to bring myself to doodle in my journals, so I purchased a 9x12 sketch pad with perforated pages so I have the freedom to sit down, sketch something, and always have the option to throw it away with nary a trace of it having existed. I also grabbed a 12 pack of Prismacolor pencils to draw with.

The Blick store in Dearborn is a tiny little place but the amount of artist materials on display is quite frankly overwhelming. I wandered down almost every aisle in awe at the sheer number of options an artist might have. Standing in the pencil aisle, I had to wonder how anyone could keep track of what pencil they need or want. I have a new found respect for anyone who has a good art supply collection as it seems like it might be a bit of work to amass.

I also picked up a 3 pack of Writersblok notebooks but upon arriving home, I see that Notebook Stories already reviewed them and found their paper to be very thin. Oh well, those can go in the drawer of unused notebooks for a later day.

Now, I must try to break in the new sketchbook.