Deciding which theme and medium to use for August was a bit trickier than usual, because I was going to be travelling at the end of the month. Since I would still be travelling in September I needed both themes and mediums to also be relatively portable.

The two themes left were tools and kitchenalia. I guessed that kitchenalia would be easier to find than tools in the cabins and motel room we’d be staying in. That was right, though mainly because it was harder to find tools while travelling. Paul’s car had surprisingly little in the way of drawable tools in it. I even bought a spanner in an op shop purely to draw it.

Since I was aiming to do some plein air painting in oils during the trip I knew I’d have that medium on hand, but I preferred the idea of doing kitchenalia as oil paintings. Instead I chose colour pencils for the tools. Water-based ones, because I like how creamy they are.

For a portable, folding backdrop I stuck two pieces of card on the back of a sheet of white paper. I took two lamps (warm and cool). Fortunately this was a car trip and we have a station wagon, so there was plenty of room for my art materials.

I was constantly surprised how effectively I was able to depict the material the tools were made of – especially metals – when white highlights are hard to create in pencil. Some of these bend the definition of ‘tools’ somewhat, but they were all fun to do.

Even after the month was over, the pencils and pad of cartridge paper I used came in handy on the holiday when we had a rainy day and nothing to do. We went for a drive and found an old rusty cart to draw from within the car.