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Archive for the ‘Sketchbook’ Category

Sketchbook Journal….around the world

Tuesday, July 24th, 2012

One of the last exercises in my Joggles class (which now feels like it was about a thousand years ago) was to work within a grid.  I chose to work with items in our living room from our life around the world.

The finished (I think it is finished) page….may add some color to the upper left corner, just a light wash of the ochre….

I chose things from my parents’ home, like the bedwarmer and the Tibetan horn:

The Peruvian copper bedwarmer (lift lid, fill with coals, close lid, pop in bed! from the pre-electric blanket era!). Behind it is a decorative Tibetan horn–think like on the Swiss Alps, except in Tibet. This one, since it is perforated with holes, clearly could not be used to signal a nearby mountaintop.

Things I sketched….observed by the dog! Left to right back row: one of Paul’s carved monkeys from Zaire (remember hear no evil, see no evil? This one is speak no evil–his buddies are still on the shelf), a Mate cup (tea, with a strainer on the bottom of the straw, used by the Gauchos aka cowboys) from Argentina, an M’Bigou soapstone carved head from Gabon, and a duck made from a pully. My half-brother TJ was very creative; he lived in LA near the docks, and made things from leftovers–our coffee table is actually one he made from a ship’s hatch cover. On the bottom it has a note from him to my dad, for whom he made the table. They are both gone, but the table lives on! In the front is a rebenque, the crop/whip used by the Argentine and Brazilian gauchos.  Not pictured is the bird on the left side of the page.  It also is M’Bigou soapstone.

Jane LaFazio was our teacher. She wanted us to draw a grid (3×4 squares or whatever filled your page) then fill the squares, sometimes merging a couple of squares if needed. This is at the inked-but-not-colored stage.  On the bottom I wrote the places I have lived.

With some of the items colored, but no background or border yet….

And now I’ll send you back to the top to see the finished page.  I rather like it!

 

Sketching in the garden

Wednesday, December 28th, 2011

A while back I mentioned I had taken a class (then another) with Jane LaFazio at Joggles.com.  And I fully intended (hah!  My road to hell just got better paved) to blog about it as I did the lessons.  Sigh.  But better late than never?  An early autumn lesson (well, it was early Autumn in Maine) from late August/early September, was to sketch in a park or the great out of doors–after all, the class was about sketching “on location.”  Since Maine is rural, I chose our garden, starting with the St. Francis statue we inherited from my late father-in-law.  I discovered in high school that the Feast of St. Francis is the same day as my birthday, so I have considered him “mine” ever since.

St. Francis birdbath

Using the Tombow water-soluble ink pen

I added the rose hips and goldenrod, but my leg were getting seriously bug-munched sitting on the grass wearing a sundress, so I’m afraid I rushed a bit at the end (plus I had to go fix dinner). Here’s the “first” finished:

I thought I was done....but I wasn't

After some very helpful feedback from Jane, I went back and filled in more on the goldenrod, mo bettah!

As always, Jane's eye is spot-on and adding more detail to the Goldenrod really improved this composition

I wanted to do another bit–these small sketches are done on 5×7 watercolor stock, and I have to say having GOOD quality paper makes all the difference in the world!   The large trees (there are actually two) just to the right of the arbor that connects the upper meadow to the larger lower meadow were just starting to turn color in the first week of September:

Early September and the leaves were already starting to turn. That tree is now bare bare bare and has been snow-clad a few times!

A memory of a late-summer, early-fall day. I think I'm starting to get the hang of this! Tho now that I see this in blog format, I notice that the angle of the "rafters" of the arbor are off from the photo. Not sure if that is because I took the photo from a different spot or not....they definitely look like they are tilting up too much in my sketch.

 

Still, Still, Still

Saturday, December 24th, 2011

Still, Still, Still is a carol the middle school chorus sang last year. I journaled the lyrics around this print of the stag. I first printed the reindeer directly on the page, but the print didn't work so well. So I printed onto tissue, then glued the tissue over the somewhat not-crisp original print onto the page. This made a sort of "echo" in the image. The background was done in Jane LaFazio's Mixed Media journals online class at Joggles.com.

For once, I actually thought ahead a bit.  Last spring, I did a presentation for my local quilt group, the Coastal Quilters, because they had been kind enough to award me a $50 scholarship to help pay for a class.  I took two online classes, one of which was lino-cutting with Dijanne Cevaal.  Last Christmas I had gotten this idea to make an ornament for my Frayed Edges friends for this year, so I noodled around Google Images to find pictures of stags and reindeer and prepared a drawing to use for a new lino-cut that is really a hybrid of about 20 pictures.  Then I finished the carving as part of my demonstration.

The resting reindeer, on tissue, on cloth, and in my sketchbook

In Fall, I finally got around to printing what I needed to make some ornaments.  At Thanksgiving time, I decided that I needed to make a few more, as it was time to give thanks, especially to some very special teachers at Camden-Rockport Middle School who have been wonderful to both of our kids.  Our younger son is in 8th grade, so this was our last chance to say a special thank you.

I made a run of 14 ornaments for family, friends and teachers.

The block is 6 inches, with the design carved on point.  I trimmed the prints on cloth to this “onion dome” (like you see in Russian churches) shape.  They are printed with Speedball Printing Ink, which I discovered the hard way last year is NOT water-fast.  Like a drop from the iron will make a blotch.  Erg.  So after printing these I sprayed with with Krylon Spray Fixative, which I hope will help.  The prints are fused to Peltex, a stiffener used in fabric postcards, and quilted with Superior Threads Glitter thread (the pearl color).  Unusually, I satin-stitched around the edge instead of using a yarn…nothing I had looked as good as a nice tight satin stitch.

A closer view of one with a more dense coating of ink that some of the others... I like it both ways.

I decided the ornaments needed a special card, so I used the stag I drew (see my earlier post this month) and photocopied onto a heavy card stock and made the note cards. Finding big envelopes was a challenge! You can see the back of the ornament at the top left, so you can see the quilting.

May tomorrow find you with those you love, with a moment of calm and joy and art and beauty.

The L.L. Bean Stag

Thursday, December 22nd, 2011

While working on my sketching and watercolor class last fall, the L.L. Bean Hunting catalog arrived.  I was instantly taken with the stag on the cover, and wanted to try to sketch him…to my utter delight, it worked!

The Stag Christmas card....made just a dozen....

Here is a snapshot of the catalog cover and my sketch:

The initial sketch, before doing the water-wash to get the shading

Fortunately, when I shared that I had used their photo with LL Bean, they didn’t mind!  I used a Tombow water-soluble ink pen on this as well as a permanent India-Ink (Pitt by Faber-Castell) pen for the outlines.  The permanent pen doesn’t bleed or leak, which preserves the crisp outlines.  Then I shaded with the Tombow (a medium-dark gray) and used a Niji Waterbrush to spread the ink.  A tiny bit of the Tombow bled outside the inked lines in the antler, but so it goes.  Finally, I used an extra-fine tipped Pitt pen to write “Forever Wild” as a “frame” for the  sketch.  Back in the old days, Maine’s Governor Percival Baxter bequeathed a huge tract of land to the state which is now Baxter State Park.  His only requirement was that the land remain “forever wild.”

The photo or scan didn’t transfer all the shading to the cream card stock, but it looks good anyway!  PHEW!  Here’s a photo of the cards and the back of a gift ornament (post coming in a couple days) :

Card, ornament and 4-pen set of Pitt pens

Waffles

Tuesday, October 25th, 2011

I found it…the last photo of the page with the pitcher and eggs.  Someone in the online class commented that it looked like breakfast. Well, it did!  So I turned it into a journal page about a family favorite:  Waffles!  I’m fairly happy with the way it turned out:

The finished journal page, complete with recipe. Click for larger view.

Back soon with more fun stuff!