With some of my Christmas money, I bought myself some Japanese ink wash painting brushes to allow myself to continue acquiring fun arts and crafts tools and learn how to use them. I got this sweet set of two brushes, an ink stone (a suzuri), and an ink stick from Amazon – perfect for a beginning artist. It arrived on Friday so I stayed up waaaaaaaaay too late painting on newsprint. In a high school art class, we learned how to paint dragons using this technique so I used my 10 year old memories and had fun. It turned out that painting with these brushes and then using my pen and ink set to add in small details worked out pretty well. Above and below and some fun pictures of my art. I like it. Can’t wait to spend more time improving my skills!

Do you like doing arts and crafts? What projects are you currently working on? Are you like me and you are too ADD to just have one project going at once? What is your favorite medium to work with? Apparently my answer to that question is all of them because I am currently jumping around between drawing, photography, using my Wacom drawing tablet, painting, sewing (I got this awesome book for Christmas with all these cute patterns…), crocheting (still have my top secret crocheting project…), etc. That’s the life of a grad student – you are so busy every day that you have to find something to help you relax. I am finding that doing random creative projects like these really help me! :)