My drawing tools

I got a very nice letter this week from a fellow artist following my blog. He asked about my tools and it's something that's really taken a number of years to get materials I like to work with, everyone is different, half the fun of being an artist is trying new tools! When I was a kid the art store was my church, I can spend hours perusing a good art store.

My digital tools.

I draw on a Wacom 21X Cintiq.
Windows 7 PC- Intel Core Q9450 @ 2.66 GHZ
4GB of memory
Second Monitor is a 24" Dell Ultra Sharp
I use Photoshop CS3
I use Jaime Brushes *you can find them by googling Jaime Jones Photoshop Brushes. It's a great tool set and I've found it has everything I need.

Overall with all my tools I've tried to keep it simple over the years. I usually have 1 or 2 tools in any medium that I do 90% of the work with. The same is true with color and paint, the best workflows are simple.

My layout tools

Eraser sheild for cleanup of my layout
Helix Auto Eraser
Staedtler eraser
Color Erase for rough layout
Staedtler 2h for shading and roughing in the line
Mechanical Pencil with a B lead, I use the manual one for fine details.
I use Staedtler Pigment Liners .01-.05
Standard Sharpie fat and thin markers
Any 'white out' type marker for ink corrections
A standard toothbrush for splattering *not pictured here

My painting tools
I use the Creative Mark brand of paint brushes
I use 2 flat sizes for 90% of my painting a size 4 and 6
I use rounds size 1 for detail work
The palette knives are for impasto FX which is what I use the Impasto paste for, I use a flat and a angled blade.
I use Derivan Matisse Acrylics and mediums.
The types of mediums (the white jars) are a Retarder (keeps paint wet longer), Acrylic Painting Medium, Impasto for building up the surface, and the Varnish is a final coat application when a piece is done.

Surfaces- I like to paint on 3 ply Strathmore cold press (rough texture) Bristol Board, it has a little round stamp on the corner you can't miss it. I've also taken to canvas recently, but Bristol is my standard.

Page of the Week!

I bitched and moaned on the idea of this page internally, mostly because I thought it was going to be a lot of work, and I'm always intimidated by city or large environment shots...what artist isn't. It turned out to be a lot of fun and a nice challenge and I actually don't hate the results!

Page of the Week

I had these huge ambitions over the break, mostly I just relaxed a bit, played a ton of games that piled up over the very busy last year, and decompressed...but I did manage to reorganize my website, and do a new page! The lettering is busting my ass...gah, so much text on these pages. I'm also offering up my very first print from my website, you can order here, so if you like what you've been seeing here, show your support and have your very own Mueller art print...at a very affordable price I might add.