20 Things That Will Get You Ready for Spring and Plein Air Season
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The start of spring means warmer days and the start of Plein Air Season. If you are looking for a gift for Mother’s Day or a new medium, take a look at these supplies, which have something for everyone from pastelists to creative enthusiasts. Here are twenty items that are sure to make your Spring great.
Ideal for use with all types of pastels, this unique surface grabs pigment so powerfully that colors are exceptionally vibrant and no fixatives are needed to keep pigments stable. Pastelmat allows artists to apply pastels with soft, buttery marks, offering superior control for layering, blending, and fine-line techniques. Made from cellulose plant fibers, Pastelmat Pads generate only small amounts of dust, are easy on artists’ fingers when blending, and allow for the use of foam and sponge applicators for painting and blending.
Winsor & Newton Soft Pastel Sets feature a vibrant selection of round soft pastels with a silky texture to ensure seamless blending. Crafted with artist-grade pigments for outstanding lightfastness, sets come in 15 or 30-piece formats ideal for students and novices.
Princeton Aquaelite Travel Brushes
Create wherever you are with Princeton Aqua Elite Series 4850 Synthetic Travel Brushes. Developed for watercolor painting, Aqua Elite features Princeton's NextGen synthetic fibers. They look, perform, and last like natural Kolinsky — at a more affordable price. Offering excellent shape retention, maximum color-holding ability, fine points, and tapered edges for precise details, these travel brushes are perfect for artists on the go. When you’re finished creating, simply remove the head and securely store it in the hollow handle to protect the shape of the brush.
Create wherever you are with Princeton Aqua Elite Series 4850 Synthetic Travel Brushes. Developed for watercolor painting, Aqua Elite features Princeton's NextGen synthetic fibers. They look, perform, and last like natural Kolinsky — at a more affordable price. Offering excellent shape retention, maximum color-holding ability, fine points, and tapered edges for precise details, these travel brushes are perfect for artists on the go. When you’re finished creating, simply remove the head and securely store it in the hollow handle to protect the shape of the brush.
Bound in natural linen, Hand Book Travelogue Watercolor Journals offer watercolorists an attractive and practical option for painting on the go. Available in a variety of sizes, each journal holds 30 sheets of soft white, acid-free, 90 lb (200 gsm) watercolor paper with a pleasing cold press finish. They also feature rounded corners, an elastic closure, and a clear storage envelope on the inside back cover.
Crafted in small batches at slow speeds in a European paper mill, Fluid watercolor papers possess the strength and working integrity of more expensive mold-made papers. Fluid 100 is a 100% cotton, natural white paper that is internally and externally gelatin-sized to achieve an archival standard of permanence. Available in Hot Press (smooth) and Cold Press (textured).
Capturing the moment is easy with Koi Water Color Field Sketch Kits. These portable watercolor sets are perfect to bring along whether you’re going to the countryside, relaxing at the beach, or walking urban landscapes. The kit is lightweight and affordable.
By combining the characteristics of watercolor paper with the finish of a drawing sheet, Strathmore has created a paper that performs like no other. Strathmore Mixed Media paper offers true wet media performance on a dry media finish — ideal for any mixed media application, including watercolors, gouache, acrylics, graphite, pen and ink, colored pencils, markers, pastels, collage, and more. For studies or finished art, this heavyweight paper features a vellum surface. The glue-bound pads contain 15 sheets each and feature flip-over covers
Field Notes wanted to produce something bright and warm for this edition, and to do that we focused on the papers. It all started when they located a batch of Mohawk Via Vellum 80# “Yellow,” a stock we have always loved but never found the right project for, until now. The finish and structure of this paper were absolutely made for embossing and debossing. While we’ve experimented with that in the past, we’ve really pushed the limits here.
The covers are heavily debossed all over, with three original graphic patterns based on flowers that are among the very first to appear in the North American Spring each year: the Ghost Flower (Mohavea confertiflora) in the Southwest, Quaker Ladies (Houstonia caerulea) in the East, and Contra Costa Goldfields (Lasthenia conjugens) in the San Francisco Bay area. Then the covers were hot-stamped with three luscious, reflective Kurz Luxor Foils.
A first for Field Notes, the dot-graph insides are made from Strathmore’s Cambric 70# text, a truly superb paper. The subtle, linen-like texture gives it a ton of character and they think writers and artists are really going to love it.
Faber Castell Pitt Artist Pen Set- Springtime
Pigmented India Ink in multiple nib sizes and 58 colors brings great versatility to pen-and-ink drawings requiring lots of intricate details. Pitt Artist Pens are great for sketching, journaling, cartooning, and drawing. Springtime Set of 6, Brush Nib, includes one brush pen each of 107 Cadmium Yellow, 219 Deep Scarlet Red, 125 Middle Purple Pink, 112 Leaf Green, 264 Dark Phthalo Green, and 110 Phthalo Blue.
Liquitex Heavy Body Acrylic Mixing Set
Liquitex Professional Heavy Body Acrylics are formulated to have a buttery smooth, thick consistency. A high pigment load produces rich, brilliant, permanent color with a good surface drag that provides excellent handling and blending characteristics with increased open working time.
This canvas is suitable for all acrylic and oil paints as well as other wet or dry media. Each canvas features cotton duck stretched around and back-stapled to kiln-dried solid pine stretcher bars. This canvas is a great economical option for new artists and hobbyists. Available in 8x10", 11x14", 12x12", and 16x20".
Lightweight and easily adjustable, the Norcross easel tilts upright for acrylic or oil painting or lies flat for watercolor painting. The tray can accommodate canvases up to 28", and the adjustable leg clips can hold a canvas up to 54". Easel collapses for easy storage and comes with a carrying case that features a shoulder strap. The extended easel height is 80". Weighs approximately 6 lbs. Fully assembled. Adjustment instructions are included.
Cavallini Wildflower Large Notebook
Sketch out your next garden, write out a shopping list, or document nature walks in this Cavallini Wildflower Large Notebook. With a beautifully designed cover featuring vintage flower illustrations from Cavallini’s archives, notebooks like this one have been favored by artists and writers (and gardeners) since Cavallini introduced them in 1989. This amply-sized notebook contains 144 pages of Cavallini’s classic cream-colored, lined paper, an inside back pocket (perfect for seed packets), and an elastic band closure to keep everything safe. It makes a lovely gift. This notebook measures 8"H x 6" W (20 cm x 15 cm).
Say hello to your new favorite puzzle! All Cavallini puzzles come packaged in a 10" puzzle tube and a handy muslin bag to keep all the pieces together. Our plastic-free packaging is just another reason you’ll love these challenging 1,000-piece puzzles.
Beautiful packaging and cheerful designs make these the perfect gift — for a friend or yourself!
Hotsox Seurat, Sunday in the Park
Seurat’s signature painting Sunday Afternoon depicts people relaxing in a suburban park. These artfully crafted crew socks are a foreshadowing of your weekend to come when you head out to a popular retreat in the style and comfort of these famous painting socks.
You're beautiful, and also cute as a button. A button mushroom, that is. And that's really cute. 95% post-consumer recycled material.
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