Art Bags and Commuting
 

Have enjoyed some of the backpack/bag/pannier threads recently. I hesitate to add a new one but..

I am taking an art class, drawing, this semester. A friend loaned me his art bag and some of the supplies. The bag is huge.

There is no way I am commuting with that bag. So 1 day a week I drive. Not a big deal. Miss the ride tho.

Surely there are some artists out there. Do any of you carry your supplies on your bike? If so, what do you use?

thx

If I'd bicycle-commuted while I was in art school, I would have had to use a BAW trailer or something. Mayyyybe a longtail cargo bike would have worked.Then again I was specializing in oil paints, so it would have been my easel and canvases as well. :)

Long tail, ala Trek transport, Xtracycle.

Check out Bikeyface
I think she's an artist and bikes with art supplies.

Thanks for the suggestions. For now I'll stick to driving that day instead of riding.

Coming home from work this morning, I saw a young lady balancing a large (~2'x3') art portfolio on her handlebars. Unfortunately my cell phone was in my pannier or I would have tried to snap a pic for this thread.

What kind of bag are we talking about here? Is it cloth with a shoulder strap?

I just put something like stiff cardboard in so the drawings won't get bent and sling it over the shoulders like a huge messenger bag. Very unwieldy but it works for short distances. Supply box goes in a pannier. The best is if you can get a locker and just leave the whole mess at school!

The bag is approx 2' X 3', holds a couple of 18" X 24" drawing pads, smaller sketch pad, straight edge and drawing board. It's not a messenger bag, no shoulder straps.

The ride is short, ~2-2.5 mi from work to school, then another 2-2.5 mi home. The prob is traffic is heavy on my path in the afternoon. I wouldn't feel safe holding the bag in one hand or with the unwieldy load on the handlebars. My ride starts home from downtown so there isn't really a good alternate route to school.

As far as leaving the bag at school. Even if there were lockers that kinda makes it hard to do homework. I'm just taking the class for fun. Not planning on becoming an artist. If I take more classes I will have to change things. Asked here 'cause I wondered how others have handled this problem or if there were an extra large messenger bag/backpack capable of handling the load.

Engineering drawings and technical illustrations are typically done on a mylar film which is normally sold on rolls. Drawings can typically be 3'x5' and the best way to transport them is ..... rolled. I used a 4" PVC carrying tube for a fishing rod myself, just added a shoulder strap.

Paper can be rolled as well, and drawings made with charcoal, pastels, water colors and colored pencils aren't an issue if sprayed with a fixative, which you should do anyway.

Supplies go in a seperate bag and are much easier to pack. Drawing board? Not something I'd want to lug around - can't it stay at school?

That's an interesting idea. Couldn't roll up a whole drawing pad. But it would be possible to roll up a few sheets of clean paper with whatever homework I was taking to class. I may experiment with that. The drawing board isn't strictly necessary. I could leave it at home.

As to leaving the drawing board or other supplies at school? Do university and college students elsewhere really leave their personal belongings at school? The only time I did that was as a grad student, and I had a desk. Just curious about that is all.

Things may have changed dramatically since I was in college, but students used to be assigned a drawer or locker or fridge space in art classes, biology classes and chemistry classes because there were some things that .... well, you really shouldn't take home!

If there's no way to leave it at school, then I'd suggest rolling up drawings. Don't do it too tightly, for a 18x24 sheet you shouldn't roll tighter than about a 4" tube. You can put several sheets on top of each other and then roll them all at once. If you're using something smudgy like charcoal or graphite, spray with workable fixative and put a sheet of newsprint between drawings as added protection.

And yeah, we leave art supplies on campus here. There are lockers available for art students and general storage space in each studio for non-majors. It's an art thing - no other department at my school has students leaving piles of stuff around. But there are lots of art supplies that are too awkward to move around even in cars; 4x5 foot wet paintings come to mind.

When I was a legal messenger sometimes we'd get stuck with displays lawyers had made up to put on easels in the courtroom. These couldn't be rolled up as they were on a stiff cardboard backing. Pick up at law office or printing place then deliver to court room. I can't recommend it, but what we did was tuck it under one arm and ride one handed. In the rain, on the hills, through the traffic. Sometimes it's a wonder I'm still alive! Especially since I was our company's guy who specialized in cargo so I think I got an unfair share of these. I liked the challenge of transporting multiple bankers boxes of documents, but those big cardboard displays were a real pain to transport, especially when it was windy!

In the OP's situation, if I couldn't roll it up then I'd get an Extracycle set-up for my bike if I could afford it. Seems like the best way to transport something like this. Probably the only good way really. If you can roll it up, even a cheap cardboard tube will suffice. At the other end of the spectrum are courier bags with specific compartments for tubes. IIRC several of Mission Workshop's bags nicely accommodate tubes, but they can be tucked into many bags.

i see these around Frankfurt. the wooden basket is barely wider than ones shoulders, which is really good for narrow cycle lanes.

http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=303485

that also make a super-sized American version with space for 12 children in the front and one in a seat on the rear. alternatively, 8 can fit in the front in their maxi-cosi (car seat).

if you need more space for art supplies :D

http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=303486

Well, my long term answer is that I don't work in large media. Or I find a way to break it down into parts. If I can't carry it on the bike, I don't do it. That was true even before I went to digital media. So generally, when I was in school, I'd buy the elements for the canvas, and stretch the canvas at school and do all my work on it there. I forget how I got the paintings home at the end of the quarter. Could be I walked or took a bus or rode very carefully and slowly.

I remember building a camera dolly and hand them pre-cut all the wood at the lumber yard and stacked it on my rack and bungeed it down. The other big component was a swiveling lab chair to go on top. That I bought downtown at a thrift store and just took the bus straight to the university.

For my puppetry classes, I was doing shadow puppets and made the stage of a heavy duty cardboard box and folded it flat and bungeed it to the rear rack.

I had a motorcycle when I was taking my drawing classes, I used a drawing board and put it into a paper art case and bungeed it to the bike and sat on the leading edge as I rode. That proved to be aerodynamic enough that I never had problems on the freeway.

Nowdays, I could probably haul large art projects on my Bikes at Work trailer.