My Tangling Supplies

I thought I'd show you some photos of my tangling supplies. I live in a very small house so I have limited space to store my drawing stuff. Except for my colored pencil cases, and a box for my completed tiles, I keep pretty much everything else that I use in a pretty storage box next to my computer. In the photo below, you can see that box, my colored pencil cases and a few other things on the bottom shelf of my printer cart:

The two pink boxes on the right in my printer cart hold my finished tiles as well as some spare pens and pencils. I also have some spare multi-packs of Micron pens in the other room.

Here's a look inside the larger of the two pink boxes:

Most of the tiles in this box are examples of individual tangle patterns. I keep them sorted alphabetically as you can see. It looks like I will need to get another box pretty soon, doesn't it? There are about 500 tiles in there at the moment.

Now for a peek inside the huge storage box:

Inside are three smaller storage boxes and a pencil bag (the turquoise thing on the left). Under two of the boxes are several folders filled with tangle patterns that I have printed out.

The white plastic box in the back holds my blank tiles, most of which I have cut myself from card stock. There are some black tiles on the left that I bought on Amazon. There is a link to them on Amazon over on the right side of my blog.

The middle box holds my drawing pens, pencils, white gel pens, kneaded eraser and a bag of assorted tortillons and shading stumps. The tin with the doors on it holds my colored Micron pens, some metallic gel pens, a little jar of odorless mineral spirits, a pencil sharpener and a small dish that I use to catch my pencil shavings. I keep some color charts and a few other flat things inside the zipper bag.

Above you can see my two colored pencil storage cases. I LOVE the large one very much. I bought it for myself with a Christmas gift card on Amazon and it's perfect for my needs. There is a link to this case on Amazon over on the right side of this blog.

When I do my drawing, I sit on the couch with my drawing supplies next to me. My big colored pencil case is huge and would take up too much room next to me but the "pages" can be removed from the binder and they don't take up too much space that way. Here are some views of the inside of that case as well as the pages when they've been removed:

There are pencils on both sides of all four pages and it holds 216 pencils. I only have two empty slots left. I keep my pencils sorted by color and I have several different brands. The majority are Prismacolor but I also have quite a few Faber-Castel Polychromos, Blick brand, Derwent Coloursoft, Derwent ProColour, Derwent Studio and very nice selection of Irojiten pencils.

Irojiten is a Japanese brand made by Tombow. They're very expensive but they come in some wonderfully unusual colors that I haven't seen in the more popular brands. They color very nicely too. They're not as soft as Prismacolors or Faber-Castel but they're not as hard as the Derwent ProColor or Studio pencils. The color goes on very smoothly. I don't know why but they also don't seem to cover up my pencil lines as much as other colored pencils tend to do.

For my birthday I got the smaller black pencil case from Dick Blick to hold all of my metallic colored pencils as well as a very old set of Berol Eagle Fantasy 2-sided pencils that I bought on a trip to Mexico when I was in college. They're over 40 years old but the colors are gorgeous and the quality is superb so I didn't want to part with them. You can see them on the left in the photo below:

On the right are some of my metallic colored pencils. This case has two zippered sections and can hold 80 pencils and/or pens. They claim that you can fit 120 pencils in it with three in each slot but they would be much too tight and difficult to remove so I only put two in each.

Below you can see the other section of this case where I have the rest of the metallic pencils and also a few colored pens. I could store the pens somewhere else, which would free up that space for colored pencils if I decide to buy a few more down the road. One of my sets of metallic colored pencils are by Faber-Castell and there is a link to them on Amazon over on the right side of my blog. They're nice pencils and the colors are very pretty. They're better quality than the set I found at Hobby Lobby and about the same quality as the third set that I found at a store called Five Below for only $2.00. 

I also keep a few individual Blick, Faber-Castell and Prismacolor metallic colored pencils in this case. My favorite gold and silver pencils are the Blick ones. The leads on the Prismacolor and Faber-Castell pencils (with the exception of the 12 Faber-Castell metallic pencil set which have softer leads) are a little too hard and don't look very metallic when I draw with them.

I also have a couple of other neat items that aren't actually drawing supplies. They're for displaying my finished tiles. I found this mini easel at Hobby Lobby and I keep it on one of the shelves of my computer desk. Every now and then I display a different tile on it. Below is a close-up:

This other item is similar but it's not really meant to display artwork. It's a business card holder but it's the perfect size to hold several tiles. I usually keep a stack of finished tiles in there that are waiting to be scanned. Because it also sits on my computer desk I tend to keep one of my favorites in the front of the stack so that I can see it while I work.

Below you can see my drawing "studio" all set up and ready for tangling:

My seat on the couch is a recliner so I'm quite comfy when I do my tangling. You can't see it in the photo, but there is a floor lamp behind the couch that shines down on my work.

In the close-up above, and in the photo below, you can see the color charts that I mentioned. Each line on the chart corresponds with one "page" of colored pencils. I always keep my pencils in the same slots so that I can find them using the charts. That way I can see how each color actually looks on paper because you can't always tell by looking at the pencil leads.