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Sketching the urchin

Finished (sort of) sketch–it looks a tad plain.  I think some understated/subtle journaling or words would help this page.

Remember about a thousand years ago I took an online sketching class with Jane LaFazio at Joggles.com?  Well, I’m getting back to posting some of the exercises.   This was the sketching from Life class…. despite living near the sea or ocean for a goodly part of my life, I had few seashell type things.   The spiral conch-type shell is quite small and actually came out of a scent-thingy ordered from somewhere, but the sea urchin shell we collected in Friday Harbor, Washington, where we lived before moving to Maine in 2004.

Here’s the sketch of the shell and original sea urchin:

The inked sketch. Miraculously, I remembered to take photocopies before adding watercolor.

I liked making each item look as if it were an old-timey photo with those deckle-edges that I love.  I then enlarged the inked sketch and traced onto tissue paper (a technique learned from Jane in an earlier online class).  I painted the page–I wanted it to look like the white foamy froth of the waves on the beach, but lacking such a photo and the skill to manage froth in watercolor, I just went for sand and curving edges….    Then I adhered the tissue to the page using Gel Medium (Matte) to blue it down…the tissue just disappears.  In this last photo, you can see the shell and sea urchin.  I loved the 5-sections on the urchin and how the dots repeat and echo in rhythmical patterns.

With the actual shell (small!) and sea urchin on the page

One Response to “Sketching the urchin”

  1. Heidi Says:

    love it