The contents of my travelling paint box

A couple of days ago I was talking to my lovely friend Kathryn and I said to her that I don’t even know anymore what’s in my travelling paint box and that it would probably make an interesting post to actually find out.

She said, “Let’s see it!”

It’s getting a little hard to close these days so it’s probably a really good idea to go thru what’s in there. This little box is one of those plastic children’s school boxes and is probably a left-over form my children’s elementary days. I’ve had it for ever and it comes with me absolutely everywhere. So let’s find out what’s in there. 🙂

Well, there are several brushes. OK, maybe some can be taken out because now look at the right hand side. Those are my brand new brushes which hold their own water! I just bought those yesterday. How cool are they? In the paint box are a few squares of sturdy watercolour paper which I use as a palette and a couple sheets of kitchen towel, and, usually, a film canister for holding a little water, (but I left that in Vancouver this time 🙁 )

There are a few fine and calligraphy ink pens in there.

And here are some essential tools: An eraser and sharpener, a ruler in a slim plastic case to protect the edge, a smudge stick, and an ink quill and some nibs in a protective metal container.

And then there are the pencils. Holy smokes, I had no idea that there were this many pencils.

These are my absolute favourites, the water colour pencils.

These are chalks.

These are regular coloured pencils.

These are water soluble graphites and charcoal sticks.

And, now this is ridiculous, these are graphite pencils. Can you say over-kill on the pencils? I think so.

But this, this is the important bit. This is the stuff I love. All this stuff is extremely important to inducing creativity. So, clockwise-ish from top left we have: an old piece of bone, horse chestnuts, a rusty ancient nail, fox fur, four silver spoons (just bought last week), a beach marble on one of the spoons, a goldfinch feather, a shard of porcelain, a King George penny and a Queen Victoria penny found in the fields after the heavy rains of 2007, (Don’t worry, a hoard constitutes 10 or more coins, so my little find gets to stay private), special pebbles, and two “Aztec” tiles Robert brought up form the depth of the ocean for me while we were on vacation in Mexico.

Whew, I’m glad I have a slightly better overview of my paint box. Time for a clean up.