Sources for recipes (immediate sources – none of them indicate they are the originators) are listed with links; it’s been long enough since I saved these originally that several links have died and now point to the Internet Archive.

A little English-to-English translation: “cornstarch” = “cornflour” and “white glue” = “PVA glue” (= “school glue”).

Clay Recipes: The Winners

There were two recipes that came out head and shoulders above the rest. They are the only two on this list I will ever make again.

First Place: Cold Porcelain

(Puffy Little Things, Mashia Crafts)

This is the best homemade crafting clay of all the recipes I tried. It allows fairly intricate shaping, is resistant to cracking while drying, and doesn’t leave residue on your hands. You pay for those qualities with the amount of work to make it, the fact that includes non-edible (though still non-toxic) ingredients, and that it dries to a yellowish color.

Ingredients: 1 cup each white glue and cornstarch, 1 tbsp each lemon juice and baby oil; may substitute lime juice or vinegar for lemon juice and cooking or mineral oil for baby oil.

Instructions: Mix glue and cornstarch, then mix in oil and lemon juice. Microwave in 15-30 second intervals, stirring thoroughly in between, until there are no wet areas anywhere. It is possible to overcook this, so shorten the microwave times as you go along. Knead smooth and leave overnight in a sealed bag. Both sites recommend wearing hand lotion to make the clay easier to work, both for kneading and when you sculpt with it, but if it’s sufficiently cooked that’s not strictly necessary.

Testing Notes: I’ve made this recipe four times now, and the instructions above are the result of my testing, not directly from either of the sites. The mixing instructions are to avoid lumps, and the real restriction is: don’t mix the lemon juice directly into the dry cornstarch. This recipe also does not reduce well – I made it successfully with 3/4 cup each of glue and cornstarch, but if you get down to 1/3 cup each it is nearly impossible to cook it enough without overcooking it into yellow rubberiness.

The two sites give different proportions for the oil and lemon juice – one of them says 2 tablespoons apiece when using a cup each of glue and cornstarch. In my testing I found that made it more difficult to cook it thoroughly, though I must admit I didn’t give it a completely fair trial. When I reduced to 3/4 cup I did not bother reducing the oil and lemon juice.

The blog instructions say to cook for 3 rounds, but my clay was never finished in that little time. The version with 3/4 cup of glue took a good 8 rounds or so; I never did it for more than 20 seconds, though, and if I’d begun with a couple of 30 second rounds it might have taken fewer total. I was concerned about overcooking it, but when you’re using a larger volume that is not as big of a risk.

Stir your hands off in between cooking rounds! This will avoid overcooking some parts while other parts are still wet, and will mean you need little to no kneading at the end.

My 3/4 cup version was the most successful of any, and although it may have been slightly on the soft side, it was workable, and didn’t stick (much). I made a few items, wrapped up some leftovers, and left them for a little over two weeks, and it was still completely usable.

Items made with cold porcelain dry very smooth and rigid, and paint easily with acrylics. The photo above is all from the earlier testing rounds; there are photos below of the final batch, including of unpainted clay. The dry items are quite sturdy – long thin pieces can be broken, but even thin flat pieces are resilient. I tried hard to break the oval-shaped “love” item in the photo above and was unable to.

Cleanup: I used a cheap plastic storage container to make this, because I didn’t want to be microwaving glue in something I would then prepare food in. I was pleased at how clean it came, though – once it dried I was able to flake most of the clay residue off, and the rest washed away easily. I also used plastic knives to mix, and broke two in the process, so the next time I make it I will find something metal or wood to mix with and just designate it a crafting implement.

Other Notes: The recipes below are given in parts, but I gave this in measurements instead for simplicity – it would be 1 part each lemon juice and baby oil, 16 or 8 parts each white glue and cornstarch, depending on the version. The Puffy Little Things tutorial has a section on troubleshooting at its end. Etsy New York has a variation they call homemade polymer clay with different proportions but the same ingredients, cooked on the stove; I did not test that one.

Second Place: Cornstarch and Baking Soda

(found all over: Southern As Biscuits, Growing a Jeweled Rose, Show Tell Share (with reduced water), De Tout Et De Rien)

This is the best play clay. Compared to cold porcelain it is far quicker and easier to make, all ingredients are edible and very inexpensive, and it dries very white. What kept it out of first? I was unable to find a way to prevent many items from cracking as they dried. The clay also leaves a powdery residue on your hands when you sculpt with it, and has a baking soda smell that I find unpleasant.

Ingredients: 2 parts cornstarch, 3 parts water, 4 parts baking soda.

Instructions: Cook and stir till the consistency of mashed potatoes, cool under damp towel, knead smooth on a cornstarch-dusted surface.

Testing Notes: This clay’s popularity is understandable: it’s easy to make and to work with. I have made it three times now. Use medium-low heat and stir frequently, scraping the sides and bottom of your pot. You want it fairly dry – not on the softer side of the mashed-potato spectrum. If you leave it softer it will be stickier to work with and curl more in the drying process.

If you cook it a little drier you can actually skip the cornstarch-dusted surface for the kneading step (in fact the kneading can be postponed until it’s fully cooled and you’re ready to work with it).

If I were really being careful with this I would throw the dry ingredients into a sifter and sift them into the pot – there are generally some little lumps when I make it, and sifting (and pre-mixing) the cornstarch and baking soda would probably help with that.

Items made with this clay dry with a white, powdery surface. Powdery in texture, that is – nothing comes off on your fingers when you handle dry items. It paints just about as well as cold porcelain; you can see items from my first two batches above and from the last batch below, unpainted. Items with this clay are slightly less sturdy than cold porcelain – I was able to break all of the “love” items in the photo – but still pretty resilient. Undercooked (wetter) clay seems to lead to more brittle results.

Cleanup: I used a stainless-steel pot and had trouble cleaning the residue off until I filled it with water and added a generous helping of white vinegar; after a little soak, it still needed the sponge but came right off.

Other Notes: Sand clay is a variation on this (these ingredients plus sand, with proportionally more cornstarch) that I have not tried.

What follows is general notes on air dry clay – specifically the two above but likely to translate to others as well – and a rundown of the other four recipes I tried and heartlessly rejected.

General Air Dry Clay Notes

The Drying Process

As your clay dries, it loses water volume, which is the source of the cracking and curling. There is no getting around the fact that items will shrink as they dry – you just have to take that into account, for instance making the sides of a bowl taller than you ultimately want them to be. The photos here are of cornstarch and baking soda clay.

You can reduce curling in two ways: by making the clay drier to begin with (this helps a lot in the cornstarch and baking soda case), and by helping the items dry more evenly. Setting them on a piece of paper towel instead of wax paper or plastic wrap to dry seems to be enough to make a big difference; lightly covering them with another piece of paper towel may help a bit more. If you do that, after 24 hours or so shift the items around – the cornstarch and baking soda will leave a slightly damp spot and the cold porcelain will stick a bit (but not enough to tear away any paper toweling). Having a double layer of paper toweling underneath larger items, especially with corn starch and baking soda clay, also helps. My photos above are of my tests of drying cornstarch and baking soda items uncovered (upper left) and covering them with wax paper (upper right) and paper towel (bottom).

Cracking, on the other hand, is a more difficult question. Cold porcelain is not prone to cracking, but cornstarch and baking soda clay is very prone to cracking. Sifting the dry ingredients to mix them and remove lumps should help, and items you have carefully smoothed the surfaces of are likely to crack less. Thinner items are also more resilient – my little rods to test curling didn’t crack, for instance. I tried sandwiching some pieces between paper towels (both a single layer on each side and a double layer on each side) which doesn’t hurt, but it’s not clear to me how much it helped to prevent cracking – those pieces are shown above. The first two shots are of partly-dried items, one of each kind of clay in each picture (cold porcelain on the right). The last shot is fully dry, and I wanted to include both photos of those little star dishes because of how the cold porcelain changed shape as it shrank, and how the two clays shrink in different ways.

Coloring

You have several options for coloring your clay. After it dries you can paint it, of course, and to color the clay itself the blog posts suggest mixing food coloring into it; I imagine you could also use watercolor paint. I have not tried either.

You can mix in spices as well, which I did try. Doing so changes the texture, of course, making it drier and potentially gritty. Cloves will give you a cool medium brown; paprika will give you a nice brick color; ground mustard gives a lovely bright yellow – at least when wet! They wash out a little when they dry; those are shown in the first picture above in the cornstarch and baking soda clay. I did not try everything in the cabinet, in particular staying away from hot pepper and from anything that’s more like a fleck of leaf than a powder. It seemed to me when I tried it out that it took more spice to make the same color difference in the cold porcelain than in the cornstarch and baking soda clay, but since glue dries translucent, the color got richer as the item dried. I failed to take a real “before” but the second picture above is of chai-spice-laden cold porcelain partially dried – you can see the drier edge is darker than the wetter middle.

As long as you use paint that doesn’t create a seal of sorts you can paint it while it’s still wet, as well. Pan watercolors, in particular, shouldn’t interfere with the clay drying process.

Sealing

If your items will be handled a lot or might get wet, you should seal them with something waterproof. If the item is small enough, you can use clear nail polish. You’ll find water-based polyeurethanes among the acrylic paints in your local crafting store, which are a good choice (or you can use paints that themselves are marked for outdoor use). Mod Podge also has a “dishwasher-safe” formula. I was introduced to it by someone who said they like it because it never remains tacky after drying, as Mod Podge can sometimes do. I don’t know whether it’s truly dishwasher safe but it should surely protect your items from humidity and hands.

No matter how well coated with a sealant, though, I would not recommend putting air dry clay where it will just sit wet.

Clay Recipes: The Also-Rans

Salt and Flour

(Pottery On The Wheel)

Ingredients: 1 part each salt and hot water, 2 parts flour, small amount vegetable oil if desired (1 tbsp if a part is a cup).

Instructions: Mix thoroughly and then knead thoroughly once cool enough. May be baked, if desired, at 250 for 50 minutes or 300 for 40 minutes (latter browns the pieces).

Testing Notes: I made this on a hot rainy day, with the oil, and it was VERY soft though not sticky. That batch, unfortunately, I failed to work with for a few weeks and it turned brown and leaked some kind of fluid all around itself in the plastic wrap. The next batch I noticed was already a little brown compared to the other clays. That was on a day that was neither hot not rainy and it was soft and sticky-feeling, but not in a gunk-up-your-hands way. However, the following day it was too fluid to do anything with.

Salt and Cornstarch

(two sets of proportions, from the blog of Factory Direct Craft and a book called Meaning in Crafts, by Edward L. Mattil)

Ingredients: Blog: 1 part each water and cornstarch, 3 parts salt. Book: 2 parts cornstarch, 3 parts water, 4 parts salt.

Instructions: Blog: Boil water, dissolve salt into it gradually, mix cornstarch in gradually. Remove from heat, knead smooth once cool. Book: Mix all ingredients in the top of a double boiler and heat, stirring constantly, until the consistency of bread dough. Remove from the pot and let cool; knead for several minutes before using.

Testing Notes: I tried the blog recipe twice and the book recipe once. The upshot here was that the salt never dissolved for me. The “clay” was gritty and sticky and stiff, and although it was also sparkly, it didn’t dry sparkly!

Glue and Cornstarch

(Nurture Store)

Ingredients: 1 part white glue, 2 parts cornstarch.

Instructions: Mix and knead.

Testing Notes: This was underwhelming. It was simultaneously gummy and crumbly, and while some additional kneading helped with that, it still dried out very fast and became powdery. It was stiff and hard to work with, and while it was very smooth and white while working with it, it dried very off-white (of course, white glue doesn’t dry white) and despite my efforts had tiny but visible lumps of cornstarch. If you decide to try this I would recommend sifting the cornstarch, mixing it a portion at a time into the glue, kneading throughly, and using immediately. It will stick to whatever you lay it on to dry so make sure that’s something like a plastic bag or plastic wrap that can easily be peeled off.

Glue, Flour, and Cornstarch

(Impish DIY)

Ingredients: 1 part each white glue and water, 2 parts each flour and cornstarch.

Instructions: Combine wet and dry ingredients separately and then mix together and knead on floured surface.

Testing Notes: WOW was this soft. Like overwet bread dough soft. And sticky as all get out – I could hardly knead it. The next day when I opened it up it was quite smooth, but far too wet to do anything with.

Hey, you made it to the end! You should get a prize. I don’t have a prize for you, but you should get one.

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It was FANTASTIC. I couldn’t have imagined a better class. In the first part we covered:

• Recommended tools/materials and what you use them for
• How stitches are formed – in precise detail
• The key to correct insertion and threading of needles on any machine
• All about needles and their history; tracing sewing problems to the needle
• All about thread; tracing sewing problems to thread
• Cleaning and lubricating machines; detecting and removing varnish (sticky residue from old oil and dust/lint)
• Testing machines including the clutch and externally-mounted motors; checking parts for wear and tear (and for being correct in the first place)
• Clutch assembly
• Feed dog timing, height, and orientation
• Pendulum timing (for zigzag stitch), cams and cam stacks
• Bobbin hook timing and how problems there cause skipped stitches
• Causes for skipped stitches that have nothing to do with the hook
• Needle bar height
• All about bobbins: winding, cases, tension, insertion
• Top threading general principles
• Diagnosing tension and apparent tension problems
• Check spring timing
• Escapement (how top thread passes around the bobbin without the bobbin case being completely loose)
• Dealer calibration of tensioners (if the number for correct tension is way off of the standard 4-5, how to change it)

We also went through all the machines in the room three times, once to find parts and adjustment points for clutch, feed dogs, and pendulum timing, once to look at the bobbin hook and its adjustment points, and once to look at the check spring timing, escapement, and tension calibration. It meant we weren’t limited to our own machines plus the ones Ray demoed on at the front of the room – we had a wide variety of machines to look at.

Ray’s approach is to teach you how machines work in general, what each part is supposed to be doing, and how to trace out the location to adjust each part on any given machine so you’re not dependent on having the exact service manual. The phrase of the week was “now, this looks different, but don’t let that confuse you – it works exactly the same as on every other machine.” It was perfect for me both because it matches how I learn best and because at the Sew-op we don’t necessarily have the operator manual, much less the service manual.

In the first three days I learned more about sewing machine operation than I’d managed to learn in my 25+ years of serious sewing and self-study. The formation of a stitch is finally not just magic to me! Ray is incredibly knowledgeable and clear, and he has great visual aids.

The second part was more of a guided work session, where we put what we’d learned into practice (we did some work in the first part, but there was a lot of lecture and demo time) with individual help from Ray and his assistant Cathy, and mini lessons on topics that came up from a given student’s work. During that part we had lessons on sergers, motor wiring, and foot pedals, and I learned more about diagnosing hook timing problems.

Before the class I was unsure how many machines to bring, and it’s hard to give advice on it because the number of machines you want will depend a lot on how much work each one ends up requiring. Ultimately I brought six: two that needed basically no work as far as I knew, two that I knew or suspected needed something moderate adjusted, and two that seemed likely to need significant work. It was the perfect amount, as it turned out. We had two no-show students and I was sitting next to one of the empty places, so I was able to have two machines out at a time. That way I could work on one till I got stuck (or until I needed to give oil time to penetrate) and then switch to the other until Ray or Cathy made it around to me to help me through my stuck point.

Here’s what I did (all machines got general cleaning and lubrication, and upper tension adjustments to balance the stitch):

1. Extra work to clean and lubricate where handwheel mounts on main shaft (fixed clutch problems); adjusted bobbin tension
2. Feed dog timing adjustment (fixed what looked like tension problems)
3. Lowered bobbin tension (this machine had feed problems but they were cured by cleaning packed lint out of the feed dogs)
4. Extra work to clean and lubricate where handwheel mounts on main shaft; replaced belt connecting handwheel and motor; re-bent bobbin case tension spring to increase tension (Ray did that); adjusted feed dog height (ditto)
5. Oiled motor shaft (motor was seized); moved feed dogs forward (they were hitting in back on long stitches); adjusted bobbin hook timing (twice; went too far the first time); adjusted check spring timing; adjusted bobbin tension; recalibrated top tension knob
6. Recalibrated top tension knob; tightened presser foot pressure dial (Ray did that, apparently just by turning it as tight as it would go – after that you could loosen it without it just spinning as it had before)

Those machines are in order of work I thought was needed – very little on the first two, a moderate amount on the second two, and a lot on the last two – so you can see my estimates were not always the best!

If pressed for advice, I’d probably say to bring as many machines as is practical for you but not expect to necessarily get through all of them. Since the class involves going through all the machines in the room multiple times, you don’t have to worry about trying to bring some kind of representative sample. You may have classmates with extras, too. At least two people in the room borrowed machines from other students, and there was a third person with extras to offer. Ray is also happy to make “adjustments” to your machine that mess up the sewing so you have to diagnose and fix the problem. Quite happy.

Other advice would be to bring your checkbook, not just a prewritten check – a few people in the class did that, and then they had to get cash out because they wanted to purchase the myriad tools and supplies Ray makes available.

I think I got a lot more out of the class because of taking apart the Morse last summer (post on that adventure still forthcoming) as well as cleaning and oiling so many machines at the Sew-op. I had better context for what Ray was teaching; I knew what the guts actually looked like so I had some scaffolding instead of everything being new.

It was so very fun, too. At the morning break the first day I texted my husband, “I have found my people.” I never ate (or even drove to) lunch alone, and we laughed and made nerdy sewing machine comments and geeked out on each other’s cool machines.

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The stamps I wanted were planner stamps: a recycle symbol to mark recycling pick-up days, and an envelope back to make occasions for which I want to send cards. That way they could be large and visible without really taking up space, because I could write over them easily. I indentured my husband to play with paint with me.

I had two kinds of 3D paint in my stash: Tulip dimensional fabric paint and Scribbles 3-dimensional paint. The taller bottle of the Tulip was easier to control (more in squeezing than aiming), but the Scribbles seemed to keep its shape better while drying – Tulip flattened out a bit. We found we needed 3 rounds to get truly good images. The papers in the picture below show the images after 2 rounds (rectangular) and 3 rounds (hexagonal) of painting – the third round was really just local touch-ups.

As you can see from the Oh You stamp on the hexagonal paper, you still have to be careful and press on all areas of the cap to get a good impression. If you catch the paint at the right moment you may be able to flatten it down a bit while it’s dry enough not to stick but still soft in the middle; I was able to do that to some extent with the recycling symbol.

All in all, though, it’s a great idea – quick, easy to correct errors (more than just heightening low spots: you can see the giant smear of paint in the first image, and there were others on different sheets of newspaper), and fun.

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It went fine, but definitely not as planned. I didn’t realize my bamboo sushi mat was comically tiny, and as it happened my netting wasn’t much better and I didn’t have a spray bottle to sacrifice to the cause like I thought I did. After I finished the first one I decided to try to make another, and be more tidy about it – the first one grew as I layered, giving it a large messy perimeter, and the middle layers of wool show through the outer ones quite a lot.

Tutorial modifications: I wanted to decorate the lower side, so I laid netting over the bubble wrap before starting to layer fleece, but in retrospect I’m not sure that was necessary. The netting is definitely desirable for the rubbing step, but you can always move it if you flip the piece (which I did, at least the second one). My needle felting stash has both smoother and coarser wool, so I sandwiched two layers of coarser wool between two layers of smoother wool. It seemed like a great use for some beautiful variegated fleece I’d been hanging on to – three of the sides use that. I only decorated one side of the first piece, with contrasting fleece at different angles, but I put strands of crewel wool on both sides of the second piece. They may need a bit of needle felting to fully stay put. Fortunately this felt won’t see rough handling.

My whole sheaf was a lot larger than both the piece of netting and the bamboo mat, so while I did the rubbing with bubble wrap step (though I dipped it in soapy water rather than rubbing it on a bar of soap), after that I couldn’t make the original tutorial work for my setup. Instead, I laid the non-netted side of the wool against a piece of bubble wrap, laid both pieces of netting on top, rolled it up, and squeezed and turned it all along its length, with a hand motion similar to rolling up a sheet of gift wrap. I did make sure to rotate the felt 90 degrees occasionally and flip it at least once, and it worked! Here they are all nice and dry, after a touch of the iron while they were still wet. I know these pictures are somewhat small but you can click them into larger versions.

You can’t get the real effect, though, until you trim off the raggedy edges, so here’s that view:

I got a little bit of dust from the dark green wool when I cut the edges off. Hopefully they are actually stable. I am not sure I have the necessary patience for hand-felting. Of course, I can always whipstitch the edges once I cut them down into squares, after I decide how large my needlebook will be. I plan to give it a fancy cover as well, so you’ll see this again.

The post Flat felt appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

Book 1: For Rank Beginners

My loving sister, after conversing one night with a very frustrated me, ordered me a copy of You Can Draw In 30 Days, whose author, Mark Kistler, had (has?) a long-running PBS drawing show. After two lessons I was confident enough to draw my father’s birthday card, the first drawn greeting card of my adult life. Shading is where this book has been outstanding so far. Though I need a lot of practice with them, I already knew the principles that higher, smaller shapes overlapped by others look further away. His simple approach to “nook and cranny” shadows and the shadow that seats the image on the “ground,” on the other hand, was a revelation. I’m going slowly through the book; I’ve done four sessions with it, but finishing Lesson 3 and its bonus challenge may take up to 3 more.

My New Year’s resolution was to draw three times a week. After a disappointing start with an online course that was bald-facedly lying when it said it was for all levels, I dropped off for two weeks or so. I’m getting back on track by doing four drawings a week (which should have me caught up with where I would have been had I kept up 3/week around the end of March), but I wouldn’t be surprised if this book takes me over three months to finish. Especially if I take more breaks to draw non-lessons.

Anyway, there’s not guarantee you’ll like this book as much as I do, but if you find yourself feeling like drawing lessons are telling you what to do without telling you how to do it, try it out.

Book 2: Drawing Animals

I ordered a drawing book published by Dover because it was incredibly inexpensive and gets great reviews on Amazon. It’s called The Art of Animal Drawing, and it’s a 1950 book by Disney animator Ken Hultgren. The subtitle is “Construction, Action Analysis, Caricature,” which also caught my eye.

I’m nowhere near ready to use it, but he goes through some general principles and then talks more specifically about different kinds of animals. Nothing too exotic, and come to think of it no birds or sea creatures (maybe that’s not what he means by “animal”), but he covers all the standard non-bird farm animals, dogs, cats, rabbits, and significant wild animals: big cats, bears, camels, hippos, foxes, kangaroos, elephants, a few others.

There are two particularly neat things about the book. One is the caricature aspect: for each kind of animal, he discusses what traits to exaggerate for caricature and gives some examples. The other is that he shows his preliminary sketches, which are often just as beautiful as – though much more abstract than – the finished drawings. They remind me of Franz Marc, in fact, and since I aspire to be able to draw some Franz-Marc-esque pieces, that’s exciting. They’re almost architectural. You can see how he draws long smooth arcs connecting body parts that aren’t connected in the finished drawing, but the line gives cohesion to the motion of the body or the composition of the drawing. There was one drawing of two cats, the front one with its head toward the ground, the back one with one leg forward, and the arc of the back one’s back to leg was nearly parallel to the arc of the front one’s back to head, though both arcs were interrupted in the final drawing (by head and shoulder blades, respectively). I expect that once I can somewhat draw animals, this book will really help me improve.

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I decided to put the cards in their own box and keep the stickers and die cuts together in another container. I thought about some kind of plastic envelopes in a binder, but found they were priced above my pain point. There were kinds that were a bit cheaper but didn’t have the panel with hole punches for a binder. Finally, when looking for ideas on making things “binder-able,” I stumbled upon an Instructables about making a pencil pouch. Essentially, you cover a shortened gallon zip-top bag with duct tape. I wanted to be able to see what was in the pouch, though, at least a little, so I bought generic unprinted bags and applied duct tape just around the edges. That should improve the longevity and help avoid the bags getting crumpled up.

To make them the right size for a binder, instead of cutting off the bottom I folded it up: first to the top of the hole-punched panel, then that section in half, and then the whole folded section up again and taped near each end. That should keep any stickers or die cuts from getting pushed down into a sticky section. The small bags, of course, are just as-is, taped around the outside and with a duct tape extension at the bottom for the hole punches.

The tape along each side is a single length folded over, and the tape along the bottom is full width, two lengths stuck to each other. I didn’t take a photo of it, but when I duct-taped the gallon bags, I made sure the tape came up a little above the folded part.

Note that if you use scissors on your duct tape you’ll be saying goodbye to them for the duration of the project. In fact, if you make as many bags as I did (20 of each size), you’ll need to clean the scissors at least once during the project, because they’ll get too sticky to use. I used Citrasolv, which worked wonders, and then dish soap because the Citrasolv left them oily.

One roll of patterned duct tape will do just over 9 gallon bags, or (I estimate) at least a baker’s dozen sandwich bags. Ten gallon and ten sandwich bags took most of two rolls – the photo below shows what I had after finishing the first 20 bags, done with most of two rolls of duct tape.

Next up is my favorite part: reorganizing the contents. I also need to figure out a new storage system for my cards.

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Back to that “other online material,” though – I haven’t forgotten that First Friday is supposed to be where I curate the web for you!

The best free drawing instruction I’ve found online is at Learn to Draw.com, by a professional illustrator. He talks about drawing specifically and logically, and gives exercises. Here are a few highlights of the long series: materials, including a useful-looking picture frame, an upside-down drawing exercise, hand tracing for understanding foreshortening, and perspective. Drawing basics leads into a whole series on shading, and then additional series on drawing people and drawing caricatures.

A brief high-level lesson can be found at Diane Kraus’ site, where she covers the steps of drawing (but not how to draw). If you’re interested in drafting, Bob Borson has tips for architectural graphics.

Other specific kinds of drawing: fashion sketching is briefly covered at College Fashion and Fashion Club. For additional unrealistic people, you’ll find a good number of caricature tutorials at Tom Richmond’s blog (an illustrator for MAD magazine). Realistic anatomy for drawing can be taken from Anatomy for Sculptors.

Diane Wright has a quite nice series of nature drawing tutorials; note that most if not all of these have 2 parts, but the link doesn’t stand out so look for it. You’ll find brief but decent still life tutorials at Artyfactory and Art Academy (scroll down; actually, scroll down on both). The first is the traditional fruit and vases, and the second is a shoe.

If you’d like to find more specific tutorials and don’t mind sifting, I have a few last links for you. The John Muir Laws website has a lot of individual tutorials on nature and animal drawing. More animals, realistic or cartoonish, are covered at Drago Art in short and simple tutorials. Finally, there’s a large collection of drawing tutorials from various DeviantArt users you can sort through.

Happy drawing! You won’t see everything I draw this year (that’s a relief, I’m sure), but expect periodic updates with a few favorites and whatever lessons I feel I’ve learned.

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