A Tip for Artists

I am back from my mini blog break and will show you what I've been up to in my absence very soon.   I need to do a few 'finishing touches' before 'whatever-it-is' is in a blog showable state.  You'll see what I mean sometime during this coming week.

But just to prove to you that I really am here I have got a tip for all you artists out there.

Yesterday I popped to our local Lidl store and picked up this charcoal sketching set (for just £5.99!):

And while it looks nice presented like this, when you come to use it the storage works out to be nothing short of useless.  You can't access the pieces of charcoal easily, they break into pieces when you try to get them out of the plastic and once you put them into the box loose they create mess everywhere! 

So my tip is, take out the charcoal and put rice in the box...:

 ..and lay the charcoal pieces on top.  It stops them all rattling about, getting broken and contaminating each other.  Clever huh?

I will need to label the box 'This Way Up' and keep it flat in storage but it is a very simple but very useful tip for the sketchers amongst us.

Thanks for looking, see you very shortly,

Nicky