Look closely. This is a box I made many years ago in art school. In it are pastels given to me by the aunt of my best friend at the time. They were the remainders of the aunt's sister's supply. I think I organized them once, but never got interested in using them. Dirty, dusty and missing many of the shades that one really needs. Not that I'm blaming my tools for the hilariously pitiful work that I've been doing for the past few days. In my younger days, I worked as a carpenter's helper and there were two sayings that Charles Parsons III used to repeat. "It's a poor craftsman who blames his tools." And "A craftsman is only as good as his tools." I've always thought the two were opposed, but now I think "Get properly outfitted and you may not need to blame the tools." What do you think?
01 March 2009
The Gift
Look closely. This is a box I made many years ago in art school. In it are pastels given to me by the aunt of my best friend at the time. They were the remainders of the aunt's sister's supply. I think I organized them once, but never got interested in using them. Dirty, dusty and missing many of the shades that one really needs. Not that I'm blaming my tools for the hilariously pitiful work that I've been doing for the past few days. In my younger days, I worked as a carpenter's helper and there were two sayings that Charles Parsons III used to repeat. "It's a poor craftsman who blames his tools." And "A craftsman is only as good as his tools." I've always thought the two were opposed, but now I think "Get properly outfitted and you may not need to blame the tools." What do you think?
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3 comments:
Yes! So true! I was always telling TSFG that he shouldn't buy the newest, latest, greatest wonderbrick camera until he could make great images with the one he had. However, having grown up with instamatic cameras with tiny film, I think I would have advanced much faster with better equipment, and I would have been less frustrated in the process.
Same is true for cooking utensils. How many people who hate cooking would have loved it if they had started out with All-Clad?
Now about those Grumbacher paints.....;)
Maybe what Charlie meant with the first one was that a non-wealthy craftsman blames his tools.
If you take all the pastels and put them in a huge bucket of rice and shake them all the dirt will come off. Some pastel artists use other gritty substances to clean their pastels. I think like kitty litter too? Well, I am not a pastelist but I have pastelist friends and I often see these cleaning measures. You should try it..it makes the pastels like new again!
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