experimenting with markers

I wasn’t always the amazing artist whose work is found on every t-shirt, coffee mug and tote bag.

OK. Maybe my art isn’t everywhere, although I have been tempted to have it printed on a coffee mug at Target. In fact, the only place you can find my art right now is the first two Saturdays of every month at the Women’s Cooperative Farmer’s Market in Bethesda, MD.

But I did have a beginning to my current art journey. And it started with markers. Well, before that I was a quilter but that’s a whole other story.

Markers were my first “grown up,” expensive art supply. Before that I mostly worked with glitter glue, rubber stamps and a heat gun. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

I think the key was getting an art room of my own. Not the closet, the bedroom or the living room. But an actual art room where I could shut the door and have some space to think.

Not having taken an art class since 8th grade, I started off with a basic set of markers from Blick (not even brush tips, gasp!) and a black Sharpie. And then I drew a curved line across a piece of paper. Then I drew over it. Again. And again, widening it in some places, keeping it narrow in others, adding bumps and loops and arcs when I felt like it. When I was done, I started coloring it in with my expensive markers.

Now, of course, I know that these were basic artist markers, not the coveted alcohol markers that I still don’t know how to use…but I did ok with what I had. And it travelled well. It’s relatively easy to add a bag with a dozen markers, a few sharpies and a notepad into your carry-on. I didn’t even use marker paper (didn’t know that existed yet), just regular old Canson mixed media paper.

I kept most of the pages and I like flipping through them every so often. I’m surprised at how far I’ve come but also surprised at how willing I was to try my markers in different ways, without consulting a book or even the internet.

And they still look pretty cool!