Touring with Pencils: A Scottish Heritage

Become a Patron!

Pencils Make a Perfect Traveler's Art Kit

"I doubt that pencils have been out of my hands for a day in the past seventy-years.
They have toured the world with me."
 ~ Ryn Shell

I've ordered the full sets of Caran d'Ache Pablo and Museum ranges of professional, lightfast pencils, to go with my new sets of Luminance and Karisma (like Prismacolor colour soft only superior quality and higher pigmentation) and my many existing full sets, and well used and loved, pastel pencils.

I think that I'm up-to-date with any upgrading my pencil requirements. I also bought the full Copic pen (and some there good brands) range recently and will be experimenting in combining alcohol ink and pencils, pastel pencils and colouring pencils, watercolours and pencils. Watercolour pencils with colouring pencils, along with using my author traditional art mediums which I'll not be combining with colouring pencils. 

I'm fortunate in that I have a life time's supply of quality papers. so, for now, I'm done with working out what I needed to add to my studio supplies. It is time to work!

If I still feel that I need any coloured pencils with this set-up, I would add the 150 set of Holdien Artist coloured pencils for a wider range of colours that willl layer well with Pablo.

I intend to work in layers. softest to hardest, hence the diversity of pencils. 

I will earn back the cost of this equipment through art sales. I'll also use these supplies in demonstration videos

I'm the one who purchased the expensive red, anniversary edition Caran d'Ache pencil sharpener. You asked me to report on that I thought of it. 
It is solid steel body, and superb in functionality. I've no regrets. My last pencil sharpener of its type had been a plastic Brynzeel model and it lasted me twenty years. If I get as much use from my new pencil sharpener I'll be happy.

I wrote out my one month, three months, six month and twelve-month goals last night and how I intended to achieve them. So this morning’s motivational thought for the day appealed to me

"It is our choices...that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities" - J. K. Rowling

Tips for setting and achieving your goal.

Your goal must be something you desire. Drinking eight glasses of water is an action, not a goal unless water was a hard to achieve commodity and you crave drinking eight glasses. 

Please try to find goals that excite you, things you would want to make an effort to achieve. 

Would you work hard to achieve something that is easy to do that you do not want to do?  

Know what a Goal Is, do not mistake an action for a goal. I love drinking, water. It comes easy. If you do not like drinking it, it might be a part of your action plan, but it is a very weak goal.  

This confusion about what a goal is accounts for why so many people struggle to achieve goals. So it will help you to read up on how to set goals, not from people who are not achieving them, but from the experts.  There are many experts in this field.


Your Goal needs to be specific. Losing weight or running is not a specific goal, How much weight and in what time frame, How far, fast or for how long do you want to be able to run and when do you plan to be able to do this? Be very clear about what it is you want to achieve,

Your goal must be believable to you. Yes, I believe I can achieve goal weight. No, I do not believe I could ~ or should run a marathon.  I set my 12 months goal to passing my next bone density scan with at the very least no further deterioration and hopefully a drug-free, all natural with diet and exercise, improvement in my bone density; I believe this can be achieved.

The Goal must be achievable. I cannot expect to achieve the looks and weight I was at age 21; I’ll settle for feeling 21, ~ when better than that, I’ll be a healthy and fit feeling 21 again. I have already achieved greater health and fitness than I ever had before in my life. At 63 I am my fitness exceeds anything I knew in my youth.

You must know how you are going to achieve your goal.

You must have an action plan so you can see how it will be, achieved.

You must have a To Do List.  Write in your diary, ahead of time, those actions you will be doing to achieve the goal you set. These are appointments with you, appointments you commit and promise yourself that you are not going to break, short of serious emergencies.  If you do not do this step, you know you will falter, you will have times when ‘you can’t be bothered or make excuses that you are too busy, so write those to do list actions into your diary now. If someone wants you to do something else during that time, you cannot ‘you have an appointment.'

The most important appointment you could have is the one that takes you to your goal, your realistic dream for you.  I am about to keep my appointment with the swimming pool beside me.
 

Have a beautiful and active day,
Ryn Shell, artist Author.

---

---

A Visit to Scotland by E J Lamprey​

There’s an old joke about a tour guide saying, as he took a party around Edinburgh Castle, “this bit is exactly as it was in the 11th century, no modernisation has been done in any way.” One of the tourists said to her friend, in a piercing whisper, “That’s Edinburgh Council for you!” 

Edinburgh is extraordinary. I live about twenty miles away, on the Firth of Forth (the Forth river estuary, to a non-Scot) and take my visitors in by train as that’s the easiest option, buses and trams and taxis in every direction on the receiving end when our feet start to hurt. 
​
There’s the added bonus that as you emerge from Waverly station you are in the very heart of the city and can do a 360 degree turn to see the city rising up its hills in every direction, ancient and modern buildings, the Scott monument close at hand and the Castle rearing high in the distance. There’s nearly always a piper playing near the monument, which not all see as an advantage, but still, it’s very evocative, and I personally love the pipes!

Salmon roes by Ryn Shell

Of course there’s more to Scotland than Edinburgh, ask any Glaswegian. It isn’t a very big country: you can cross from east coast to west in time for a late lunch, then drive north alongside Loch Ness, the deepest coldest longest loch in the world, and still reach Inverness, the gateway to the Highlands, by nightfall. You’ll pass castle after castle, loch after loch, mountains and nature reserves, and there are stories and sidetrips every step of the way. Worth a trip? Oh yes.

But - bring a raincoat. We do get good weather, and as I type this it is sunny and a very pleasant twenty degrees outside. The gloaming will last until well after ten pm tonight, because this is May - but we have four seasons in every day, even in the best weather, and the worst weather is dreich (dull and damp) for weeks on end, making you suddenly understand why your Scottish ancestors have spread all round the world!

---

About author E J Lamprey​

Elizabeth (E J) Lamprey lives in Scotland, within easy distance of Edinburgh. She loves Scotland but accepts that with a mere fifteen years residence she is still considered a tourist, albeit a tenacious one. 

She has been variously a book reviewer on a city paper, a columnist in a national magazine, a copy-editor and critiquer, a commercial blogger and a reporter on a country newspaper, usually alongside more conventional jobs, using her maiden name, her married name, or Lamprey, which is just one of the four names with which she was lavishly endowed at birth, and the one she likes the most. 

Writing a series of cheerful whodunits set in a Scottish retirement village is her favourite occupation, but a secret passion for SF led to a couple of books appearing under the name Joanna Lamprey. Quite recently the research into singles websites that started with the third Lawns book spawned another book, this time under the tongue-in-cheek name Clarissa Rodgers-Briskleigh. 

One thing all the books share is the celebration of being no longer young, yet quite definitely not yet old. It is nature's unexpected and welcome gift, a burst of autumn sunshine and energy, and although that wasn't the original intention, all the books celebrate it to the full.

---

---

The Grasshopper Lawns books

​All my Grasshopper Lawns books are set in the Firth of Forth area which is around 20 miles from Edinburgh, but only one of them, Seven Eight Play It Straight, spends a lot of time in Edinburgh, for the festival.  However, it does go underground, and I talk a lot about the Old Town in the book, Seven Eight Plays it Straight.

---

---

---