betweenhandandpaper:

Who: Elana Delaney (secularspecter on tumblr) – illustrator, mixed media artist and currently on hiatus editor of The Continuist 

Supplies:

• Bic mechanical pencils
• kneaded eraser
• black Staedtler 0.1 mm pigment liner pens
• black Sakura drawing pens (0.3 mm, 0.4 mm, 0.45 mm, 0.6 mm, 1.0 mm)
• Prismacolor marker set
• Bic and Staples brand highlighters
• small tub of pencil crayons, mostly Laurentien, Crayola and Prismacolour
• flat tip and pointed round tip paint brushes
• Delta Ceramcoat, DecoArt and FolkArt acrylic paint in 2 oz. bottles
• Elmer’s disappearing purple glue stick
• 11 x 14 sketchbook and found paper scraps
• iTunes library for focus and creative vibes

Why I love them:

I use mechanical pencils because I like how clicking the top is faster than sharpening all the time to maintain a very thin tip to draw with. The kneaded eraser works by picking up the granite from your pencil so it doesn’t leave eraser shavings and it’s like a ball of sticky tack that you keep stretching and reshaping and it seems to absorb all the granite in the world without leaving any residue on your page and I love it and it’s the best thing evaaaaaar!!!

I buy a few different sizes of black, smear and fade resistant, waterproof drawing pens because in my drawings I like to use solid lines of varying thickness, outlined shapes and big spaces of solid black or white. I can draw thin shading lines, wires or eyelashes and tiny details like reflections on eyeballs, tiny windows on tiny buildings, tiny diamonds, tiny hearts, tiny text, you know. I can also fill in thick chunks of hair or clouds of smoke or the backgrounds of portraits with black to create never ending voids of unknown nothingness for my drawings to float in.

My Prismacolour markers are awesome because they have one fine tip and one broad tip which is handy for filling in both tiny shapes and large areas of solid colour. I also love the way they blend like water colours. I’ve recently starting using highlighters in my drawings because I love how bright they are.

I’ve had the bottles of acrylic paint since I was 5 when my mom stocked them in the brilliant craft room she built for me. There’s a collection of about 40 colours and I took 15 with me when I moved out. Side note: that craft room was a sanctuary of glue guns, markers, paint, pencil crayons, fabric, pipe cleaners, sea shells, beads, gimp, string, cardboard boxes, walnut shells, sequins, plastic jewels, miniature appliances and furniture, feathers, marbles, stickers, patterned paper and a multitude of other items you might not expect to be used in the making of crafts but which I was overjoyed to paint, bejewel and glue to things. 

I collect paper of varying sizes, colours and textures to draw on as well as cardboard which I like to paint and glue drawings to. I like round or long rectangular pieces of cardboard but the star of my collection is a heart shaped piece from a box of chocolates.  Stored in a plastic Kuririn (a friend of Hello Kitty) bag is my collection of various…gluable items that I find pleasing to the eye - maps, stickers, menus, flyers, extra copies of zines, newspaper comics, pogs, postcards. I cut out the best parts or keep them intact before they end up on either a mixed media piece in combination with my drawings, in a sketchbook or on a bulletin board. They may also get glued in one of my ‘scrapbook/collage/visual journal of memories and pretty things I’ve found’ which I don’t post much of online but maybe one day I will. 

sketchbook pages

light trail by secularspecter

see more work here: (^-^)