Sketchbook Project - Week 21

Hey pals.  Judging by my sketchbook this week, it appears that I am still very much into pattern making and repetition.  Apparently with a bit of obscurity.  I'm referring to the page with the baby birds.  We saw five chicks in a bird house this week, and they're so strange looking.  I wanted to capture a bit of their weirdness, and somehow it turned into this silly pattern.  My other pattern pages, like the geometric at the end and the rose petals were very satisfying.  I really enjoyed painting the rose petals, and I might recreate that as a separate piece and invest a little more time into it.

The tomato and glass of tea were more explorations in acrylics.  Once I'm caught up with pet portraits (this week hopefully), I hope to fill a few clayboard canvases with some acrylic paint.  They will very likely be food and plant based.  I've got killer photo references of blueberry plants from the farm that would make the best piece.

The girl with the earring was originally going to be painted.  I wanted to recreate the metallic look of gold that you see in paintings in her earring.  But I kept sketching and shading in pencil and then chickened out about adding color.  Baby steps.  Each time I draw something human related I grow a tiny bit more comfortable with the figure.  One day.

The second from the last spread, with the four big stripes of color, were a fun concept.  I chose four plants from the garden that had beautiful contrasting colors and recreated their vibrancy with watercolor.  From top to bottom, I referred to a kale flowers, a marigold, swiss chard, and a purple wildflower. I like the way these pages came out, and I look forward to expanding more on this color concept.

Thanks as always for reading.  See previous pages here.

Acrylic Paint

Acrylic Paint

Colored Pencil & Gelly Roll Pen

Watercolor

Mechanical Pencil

Watercolor

Gelly Roll Pens

Have a great week!

Sketchbook Project - Week 20

Happy Monday!  My daily sketches started with a bit of pattern making with the plants and swans and even the sewing piece.  With the flower, I wanted to play around with a pen and use ink and lines for shading. The pencil piece is a collection of herbs in the farm gardens.  I struggled with deciding if I wanted to color this page.  Then I couldn't decide on watercolor or colored pencils, so I just decided to shade with my mechanical pencil. The fireflies and night camping scene were inspired by the first sighting of fireflies that night!  And finally, the last spread was inspired by the chard plants in the garden.  Their stems are the most beautiful shade of fluorescent red, and I really wanted to just play a bit with that color. 

I can't believe that it's been twenty weeks, and I'm already past the halfway point in my THIRD sketchbook.  I love looking back at the pages in all the books, and I'm excited to see the stack of finished sketchbooks at the end of the year.

Acrylic

Colored Pencil

Left: Gelly Roll Pens          Right: Gel Pen and Crayola Marker

Mechanical Pencil

Acrylics

Acrylics

Have a great week!

Sketchbook Project - Week 19

I'm not going to lie--this week I struggled to come up with ideas for these sketchbook pages.  I do have a trick to help me overcome this.  I like to keep a folder on my phone, where I tuck away photos that I take throughout the week and screenshots of beautiful images and artwork that I find on social media.  If I need some inspiration, I'll flip through the folder and see if anything catches my eye. 

Four pages this week were farm and home inspired.  It was very rainy earlier this week, so I painted rain clouds on Sunday.  The blanket, strawberry and bobwhite quail are also farm/home inspired.  The other pages are me playing with techniques and mediums.  Do you have a favorite?

Watercolor

Left: Watercolor    Right: Crayola Markers

Acrylics

Acrylics

Left: Colored Pencil     Right: Watercolor & Acrylics

 

Check out all the other weeks here.

Have a great day!

Sketchbook Project: Week 18

I absolutely could not wait to paint more with acrylics this week!  We've been netflixing Bob's Burgers, so obviously I had to paint a cheeseburger.  The more I paint, the more I discover what is possible with this medium.  I'm also discovering its limitations and my limitations with the current brushes that I have.  I keep a piece of tissue paper between the acrylic pages to prevent them from sticking and peeling.  I'm hoping they cure more after a few days of drying, because I definitely want to keep putting acrylic in these books.

The spread with the four quickly sketched squares of fleeing animals is something that I had to get onto paper to remember.  After I work more on my acrylic skills, I have plans for a fun little series of these.  I think I'd also like to work on some still life paintings.  Which is your favorite spread this week?

Acrylic

Acrylic

Watercolor & Acrylic

Acrylic and Gel Pen

Gelly Roll Pen

Colored Pencil

Acrylic

See past pages here.

Have a great week!

Sketchbook Project: Week 17

Starting a new sketchbook, regardless of how many I've finished, will probably always feel like a bit of a hurdle to jump.  But, my apprehension was trumped by my excitement, and I dove right in.  The pages this week were half travel-inspired and half experimentation.  Firstly, we at a lot of tacos on the workshop tour, hence the cute taco pattern.  The peony bud was photographed at a botanical garden in Alabama. Most weeks, you'll find a simple pattern or abstract piece mixed in somewhere.  I usually need a day of less tedious, less detailed sketching.  That's where the blue pattern comes in this time around. 

But I really want to talk about the toadstool and coffee cup pages.  Those were painted with acrylics. I've never painted with real acrylic paints before.  (And by that I mean I HAVE painted with cheap craft acrylics.)  I bought an inexpensive set in Atlanta (a birthday gift to myself), and I couldn't wait to try them out.  You might notice that the toadstool is on a piece of paper that is glued into my sketchbook. Because I didn't know what I could do with this paint, and I was afraid that if I started painting directly in my sketchbook it might turn out terribly.  But it didn't.  So I cut that baby out and glued it in. High fives all around! The coffee cup was painted directly on the page, and I'm happy to report that this sketchbook (Moleskine Art Plus Sketchbook) held up beautifully to the paint. 

So here's to adventures and experimenting with mediums!  Now I'm off to play more with the acrylics!

Catch up on previous weeks here.  Join my new sketchbook community here--first newsletter coming SOON!

Micron Pens & Colored Pencils

Watercolor

Watercolor

Left: Micron Pen & Gelly Roll Pen     Right: Acrylic on Cardstock

Left: Micron Pen           Right: Acrylic Paint