When I first started taking pictures I used a cheap plastic body film camera, one step above disposable. As I got older I was allowed use of the family camera, a Pentax something or other, a real camera, you had to focus it and be aware of your light levels and exposure. Then my siblings and I got digital cameras with images that came out at about 600px, if that, but you never had to worry about running out of film. Being able to take photos of any daft thing I liked without an associated cost for film development was amazing. Not long after that I got a phone with a camera on it, a camera phone, that was a big deal once. The best camera I had was the one I had on me, right until I got a DSLR. It was chunky, and I worried about damaging it. The only thing more expensive than this camera was my computer, also a precious tool of creativity. In retrospect, I probably worried too much, I should have allowed myself to use the DSLR more. The camera on my phone was more convenient, and again, in retrospect, the results of the low quality camera are just as interesting – I wish I’d saved more of them to look back on. I guess what I’m saying is, I should have just stopped worrying about it and embraced whichever camera was on me at the time, quirks, quality, chunkiness and all.
“The best camera is the one you have with you.”
a saying that I’m sure someone can be credited with but has been used by so many.
Of course, it’s not just photography, I’m extremely guilty of obsessing over using the right tools in the right way. What if there’s a better way of doing this? What if I can make my process simpler? This way lies no productivity, half finished projects and possibly madness. I admire anyone who has made their own tool for a specific job that maybe only they need it for.
I recently added a /uses page to my website, documenting the various pens, paints, software etc. that I use most often. Let’s have a go of giving my choices reasons.
The tools I have on me
I don’t get out as much as I used to, it’s harder to be spontaneous with a young child, but when I do manage to get out of the house in a creative mindset, here’s what I take:
The most important thing here is a little travel watercolour palette. I’ve had this palette since I was in 6th Form. I bought it myself, it’s sentimental because it’s mine, it’s always been mine. It’s the one I use, the one I will keep refilling when it runs out. It was cheap enough that I never worried about using it and it’s small, so it went everywhere with me. This palette has been in three continents.
Also in my bag:
- The smallest sketchbook possible, preferably with decent paper for watercolour, but also sometimes deliberately terrible paper for watercolour.
- Black fineliner, usually a .5 but sometimes a .8. Honestly, whatever one I haven’t managed to destroy by pushing too hard.
- Black brush pen, I love a chunky line. I’ve searched for a long time for the best chunky line. Brush pens are hard to use sometimes but they allow for chunky, fine and everything between. My current favourite is a Kuretake Fudegokochi Japanese Brush Pen with a medium nib, I picked one up in Japan back in 2014 and I’ve been using and replacing it ever since. The refillable Pentel Brush Pen is my second favourite, I find it slightly harder to use, it’s a little too flexible for quick sketches but great for large pieces.
- A mechanical pencil with Pilot Color Eno 0.7 Leads in various colours, I bought a massive box from Cult Pens about 10 years ago, they were discounted for stock clearance. I love that the coloured pencil lines stand out. The leads snap a little easily, but I recently got a Sakura Sumo Grip Mechanical Pencil, it’s got a very chunky grip, hopefully this will help. When I finally run out of these leads, I may try others, this was a choice of cheapness and convenience rather than quality.
- Phone. Does that go without saying these days? Maybe. But most of the photos I take are on my phone, it’s a tool to document, a tool to play with images on and a tool to record thoughts with. My current phone was refurbished from Back Market, somehow it has 256 GB storage, this seems like a lot to me. It also has a cool blue-green metallic back, because not everything has to be a little smooth black box.
Essential
The tool I depend on for most of my creative work and income (outside of my PC) is the Silhouette Cameo. A paper cutting tool. It takes vector designs and cuts them into paper and card. Almost every item in my shop is made using this device. I really enjoy the process, starting with a rough sketch and creating a neat and tidy vector image from it. Then picking colours, thinking about layers and cutting them with the Cameo. Taking an idea, making it digital, then bringing it back into the physical world using layers of coloured card, the results can be very interesting, even before they’re fully assembled. If I’d never found the Silhouette existed, I probably wouldn’t still be making cards, and I definitely wouldn’t have started making the 3D shape activity kits.
Current Favourite
The tool I enjoy using the most right now is Obsidian, a note-taking app. I’ve been using Obsidian for a few years for Dungeons & Dragons planning, documenting our sessions and the growing homebrew world we share, from there I started taking general creative notes in it. Obsidian is a really simple, well put together note-taking app with wiki like features for linking notes together.
There’s a wide variety of community developed plugins and themes that can customise Obsidian to suit more or less any note-taking need you have. Music notation, scientific data, daily habit tracking, dream diary, plotting a novel, Obsidian has tools to help you do it. Obsidian uses vaults, a vault is a bit like a notebook, each notebook can be differently set up and suited to the task you use it for. Sometimes it’s good to run a vault as lean as possible, almost no plugins, out of the box functionality only. Sometimes you want a monster stat block generator, dice roller and the ability to colour code your internal links based on what tags they have.
I’ve not even mentioned the best part yet, all of the data you put into Obsidian is kept locally in Markdown format, meaning that in the end it’s just text. No compatibility issues, no being locked in the cloud (regular reminder to always back up your work).
Recently I’ve been doing a lot of personal digital archaeology, trying to put back together old blog posts with missing images and finding things in file structures 20+ years old on abandoned drives. Having Obsidian around to keep track of what and where everything is has been very useful. I’m seriously considering setting up a vault with an overview of my entire folder structure so I can make notes on projects and interlink things without duplicating them into several folders. I downloaded my Twitter post archive into it as an attempt at preserving the past, saying as I don’t frequent the site any more, and it’s becoming more and more sealed off. My old Yahoo Groups archive is in there somewhere, too. Download your data, folks! Back it up. Future you will likely thank you, or distant future cyber-archaeologists, trying to piece together our digital world. Who knows?
This post might actually be about making the best of what you’ve got, embracing the process, and always remembering to back up your work. Excellent advice that I should take.
This post was written as part of the July 2024 IndieWeb blog carnival, hosted by James.
