Rabid Sharks
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Prison Blog

In which Possum recounts his experiences as an offender in the system.

Possum Bones is autistic. He has identified as a dirty kid in the past, and he’s attended multiple rainbow gatherings. He has several years left to serve in the Washington Correctional system.

He has been making art since he could sit up. He communicates better in writing than speech. If you are interested in the experience of an autistic person doing prison time, check out his Prison Blog. If you are a fan of comic art, underground/outsider music, Lovecraft, Clarke Ashton Smith, Murakami, Cixui Liu, etc.

Unpacking art supply order

Its always a pain coming up with a whole painting to test a new type of paint ... but this casein stuff does appear to work pretty much the way I had hoped. There's probably a downside, but
1) it reactivates and blends just like gouache does. You can basically use it the same way I use gouache.
2) you can also easily put it on thick enough to build an impasto. Like, easily, even with my soft mixed media brushes. Its probably easier to build an impasto with this than it is with acrylic. while I have no idea what I'd do with such an advanced technique , I love the idea of it.
3) it eventually dries permanent, and dries nearly as fast as gouache in the meantime. So, its basically archival quality.
4) the oldest paint known to man . So, that's cool.
5) extremely matte.

Probably the downside is a chemical one ... I think it may be tricky to make this paint bright ? The tubes I got are multiple pigments, and I also noticed the cad red was very liquidy, unlike the other two. However , the drippy parts come out opaque, so its not a big deal. Probably, heavy metal paints don't mix as well with casein binders. I've noticed this issue with cheap cadmium red gouache too, however.
Finally, the toxicity. Even the white paint is " CL " , which is bad. A normal tube of PW 6 is " AP " . So , what that means is that something in the paint formula other than the pigment is toxic enough to be CL under the ASTM deally. For reference, a tube of white watercolor is AP , but a tube of cad red is always CL . Usually, this means the material is significantly carcinogenic.

Holbein gouache

I only have one tube, and different pigments are gonna be different, but tentatively it does look like this gouache is different. Its probably easier to work with thinner layers of this gouache, meaning it works a little more liked a watercolor. Its less gummy, and more dense and granulated, without being chalky like the Utrecht gouache.

Holbein acrylic gouache

Uh, if I was going to use acrylic, this stuff actually does lay down pretty much like gouache. Then it dries permanent, which sucks, but its probably better for someone like me than traditional acrylics - which seem now to the sort of meant to be similar to oil ?

Derwent line painter graphite pen

Super cool. You can get about three shades of grey with one pen.

Brush cleaner puck

Wow, this is gonna be so useful. You stick it in your water jar, and it squeeges the paint off your brush with little plastic bumps. For someone who uses very sticky paint ( gouache ) this is a useful item.

Elisa Carlson