Sketching India (Well, not Really)

Food is great fun to sketch, especially unique, unusual and ethnic foods.  I am certainly not an authority on Indian cuisine, but I do like to go to this one particular restaurant with my daughter.

Quick sketches at the restaurant and the addition of text and decorative elements later on at home allowed me to record a really wonderful afternoon.

Rather than sketching the whole table I simply did a quick sketch as each item was brought out and jotted down what it was.  Fast and fun!

Sketching and the Gift of Reflection

This set of sketches is from the beginning of April. I was about to succumb to cabin fever, then I caught spring fever and found myself outside despite the still barren colors and chill in the air.

In the very first sketch I was excited to document the first signs of green grass and skunk cabbage in the marsh. That led me to a celebratory spread for Earth Day.

In that frame of mind even my composter became a worthy subject for an entry. The composter is such a cool thing. I love how your simple kitchen and garden left overs can create such rich soil and contribute their refurbishment back into this years garden.

On the next page I created a memorial for my Dad, who died unexpectedly when I was only 10 years old. The gray day brought up a lot of old memories and a fresh feeling of mourning his loss. That's a good thing for me. I tend to be a very future oriented person. I don't spend much time at all looking back, remembering or being nostalgic. Slowing down, sketching and recording the date reminded me of what day it actually was. So in this instance the practice of sketching and journaling gifted me with the time, space and place to reflect.

Here's just a few quick sketches of  meals. Well, actually in the first I was eating i the car and the view was a lot easier to sketch than my take out!

On the bottom there's a wonderful spring salad. Eating seasonal food is always a great way to to tune into the cycles of nature, and I always enjoy a good spring salad!

Notice how scribbly and quickly the salad is sketched in and how I reserved the color for the salad and kept the other things in gray scale. That's a great tip for helping you emphasize a portion of a sketch.  Add color to the most important element only, to keep the focus there and to help tell your story.

Sketching to Capture the Mood and Moment

I know I'm behind in my posts!  But spring is a busy time as the weather turns nicer I find myself sketching outside more and more. The daily changes in nature keep me sketching fast and furious to keep up with Mother Nature!

 I wanted to share this particular sketch because it's a perfect example of how a daily practice of sketching can capture and preserve so many things that are very important in your life, and important to you as a person.

Even though my kids are grown, holidays are still busy and sometimes stressful days for me. This sketch captures the peaceful, quiet moments early on Easter morning when my husband and I had a few precious moments to enjoy some special seasonal foods and reflect on the meaning and joy of the day before all the hustle and bustle began.

I tried to record for myself the colors, the mood, the feeling, the atmosphere and memories that Easter conjures up for me. While it may not be as powerful for you, when I see this sketch is holds a symbolic treasure trove of thoughts, ideas and feelings for me.

This kind of personal, recording of inner experiences is one of the great benefits and pleasures of keeping a sketchbook.

Sketching as a Way to Explore Cultures

One of the really cool things about being a sketcher is that you really get to immerse yourself in experiences.

Going to a museum is one thing, but spending time sketching at a museum brings that experience to a whole other level.

This goes for everything....visits to a zoo, a restaurant, a public garden, a city, a nature preserve...whatever.

When you slow down and take the time to drink in your surroundings and gaze deeply at what's in front of you and then translate that experience on to paper you've engaged with that artwork, animal, city, food etc in a very intimate and unique way.

If you really want to know something, draw it. Snapping a pic with your iPhone is too quick, to mindless to really get into your soul. Ah, but drawing, that's something else all together.

I had the good fortune of viewing the new exhibit of Japanese Edo period screens at the Yale University Art Gallery last Friday. It was a planned trip with time for sketching, wandering around the gallery (which is really much more like a museum, think small scale Met), and eating lunch. I went by myself so I would have plenty of time and feel relaxed about taking time to sketch.

The screens were beautiful. I tend to like Asian art, and enjoy it for its elegant simplicity and expressive use of line.  These particular screens also had a bit of humor in them and a number of animals which also delighted me.

In most art museums, this one included, you are typically only allowed to use a pencil for sketching and note taking, so there is no chance precious art works can be damaged (or vandalized like this incident when Delacroix's famous painting Liberty Leading the People was damaged by a Sharpie wielding activist)

Anyway, the point is that I could only use a pencil, and I was using a Papermate ComfortMate Ultra 0.7 which I do find comfortable to hold.  The down side of this that it's a bit difficult to reproduce the look of the brush and ink used on the scrolls. But I had a plan for that. I decided that at lunch I would use a water brush and a little tin of Viarco ArtGraf water soluble graphite to enhance the pencil sketches and achieve a brush and ink look.

This worked great and was fun to do, but as always I just couldn't leave things strictly monochrome. That's a problem because I think I may have liked the sketches better that way but alas I felt a strong need to throw some color in there.

These screens are approx. 300 years old and many of them were embellished with gold leaf lending a warm glow to the screens. In my sketch kit I also had a brush pen filled with Lie de The  ink (tea colored ink) , these were Japanese screens, I was in a tea house having lunch, and well it seemed obvious that I should add the ink to the sketches.

The blooming branch was a detail on a set of painted wooden doors and I definitely could not resist that pop of color especially since we're still weeks away from cherry, apple and dogwood trees blooming here.

Spending time studying the screens and their various motifs and taking the time to really look, and think the original artists thoughts after him in an effort to capture some of the character of the artwork on the screens was a hugely enriching experience. I spent about 1 3/4 hours doing these sketches. I read the information cards, and sat and looked and thought about how the artist might have approached the making of the designs. The size brush he may have used, the direction of his strokes, the order in which they were laid down. I understand these screens better  and have a much more complete memory of them from the time spent interacting with them than I ever would have had I just browsed through the gallery in 20 minutes or so, (and that's longer than most people stayed in the room of screens that day as I was sketching).

After all that sitting I strolled around and looked at some beautiful works of art. Magnificent things in the antiquities gallery, and then on to some of my favorites, Tiepolo, Van Gogh, Monet, Cezanne, Homer, Inness, Church, Heade,  Bierstadt, Burchfield.

A short walk to a new tea house was next, where I made the mistake of trying to sketch my lunch quickly when I was tired and hungry. The sketch was a mess but at home gouache fixed most of what was wrong.

Gouache is something I would never be without, if for nothing else than that it can cover even the blackest ink lines and fix mistakes, turning badly drawn sketches or muddy watercolors into new lively, vibrant renditions of your scene.

I will say though, that even my very bad sketch contained enough information and memory joggers to allow me to re-create the table setting in gouache with a fair amount of veracity.

Sketching in museums is one of my favorite things. I learn so much and really come away with a sense of having been in contact with a different culture. Short of traveling I think it's one of the best ways to broaden your cultural experiences.

Sketching a Birthday

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Today was my birthday!  I'm going to share with you one reason why sketching is such a wonderful thing. I spent some time this afternoon sketching some of the lovely things I got for my birthday.

Since I'm a lifelong gardener and my birthday falls at the very beginning of spring my mom almost always gets me flowers.

This year, a beautiful flat of violas. The variety is Marina for their lovely sea blue color. I prefer violas to pansies (though I love them too!). The petite size and small, squinty "faces" on violas charms my heart. Also since I adore fresh salad greens grown organically at home some Romaine lettuce and curly Simpson Elite came along with the violas.

My birthday also falls somewhere in the neighborhood of Easter so a beautiful bees wax candle shaped like an egg, was my gift to me! I picked it up at the museum today, I made a little trip there for inspiration on my birthday.

The cookies from my favorite bakery and the elegant little glass tea pot, which holds tea for one or two along with one of my favorite teas, 10 years Pu'er, Huang Gong Shou from my husband (who also cooked a marvelous dinner and ordered a double fudge cake from my favorite bakery <3).

Sketching is so marvelous because not only did these lovely gifts delight me I had the pleasure of sketching them. Taking time to really look at them, study them, get to know them and absorb their special qualities. Some, like the cookies will be gone by tomorrow(!) others like the violas and lettuce will last for a season, the tea pot will likely be with me for a long time. BUT I will always have the pages in my sketchbook,and a little journal entry that will  bring me back to this day with such clarity and vivid memory that I will never lose it.

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Here's something else I did on my birthday! Sketched form the car since it was too windy and chilly to sit outside.

I'm still trying to figure out how best to use the Pilot Pocket Brush Pen.

I've seen other people use this to great advantage, and it intrigues me.  It creates a very bold mark. Which quite frankly scares me!

I'm used to my sketches being fluid, and more delicate, refined in a scribbly, free sort of way. I think fountain pen and fine point markers lend a certain elegance to my work.

However, the expressive possibilities of this pen excite me. It's brush point is extremely responsive to pressure, more so than the Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Brush Tip pens, or any other brush tip pen I've used. I actually think this brush tip is spring-ier than even a real Chinese brush, the kind used for Sumi-e.

The ink is fade proof, permanent, and waterproof (give it a minute to dry) and very black. The marks (lines) can be very fine and delicate but since I'm rather heavy handed I'll need to work on control. Applying any pressure and holding the brush at different angles produces all kinds of expressive marks. They are BOLD Marks! Which produces a sketch of a different quality than I'm used to seeing come from my hand.

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I can't decide if the bold sketches made with this pen are "me" or not. I think they might be but I'll need more time to experiment and get comfortable with it before I know for sure.

New tools and materials are always exciting and help us stretch and grow. Making art is an adventure, and that makes me happy!

Foodie Sketches

Foodie sketches make me happy. Here, at last, is justification for needing to go to a bakery, cafe, or adorable restaurant. It's also an excellent reason to order dessert. Clearly, you need to do this for sketching practice.

Beyond the fact that it's a reason to enjoy some yummy treats, sketching food is enormously fun. The colors, shapes and textures of food give you ample opportunity to use line, color, and a a variety of materials.

This sketch was made using a fine point black Sharpie marker and some quick watercolor washes. Notice the white gel pen used to create the glossy shine on the drizzle of chocolate sauce. Works every time to create the illusion of shiny surfaces, that's why I always keep a white pen in my sketch kit.



Sketching your meal at a restaurant is also great if you're eating alone and need something to do. I will warn you that it's usually a conversation starter and you're likely to have a few admirers, unless you're somewhere very crowded with people coming and going too busy to notice what you're doing.

This sketch of a lunch with my daughter at the Olive Garden restaurant ended up being photographed by the staff so they can print it, frame it and hang it up in the restaurant! That's why I hastily put my name and website at the bottom. Happy stuff like that happens when you're sketching in public.

Sketching at a restaurant of course means that you'll need whomever your eating with to be tolerant of your crazy need to sketch your food.  My family is used to it by now. If you go out to eat with fellow sketchers that's  perfect and usually a really fun time!


Of course sometimes you don't want to be bothered with on lookers or even bothered to get out of your jammies or yoga pants and get dressed to actually go to a restaurant.

In which case you can sketch food at home!

Here's a fast scribbly sketch of breakfast right in my own kitchen.

A word about fast, and  fast food sketches. No pun intended ;-D  First, usually I'm hungry! Second, often there's a non-sketcher with me and I don't want to drive them entirely crazy making them wait to eat until I'm done sketching. Third, there are so many complexities to food sketches, cups and plates with ellipses, the shape of spoons and forks etc. that if I slow down I'll get all hung up on getting those drawn "perfectly" and that will take far to long and ruin the spontaneity of the sketch. Occasionally, if I have the time and the main object is something like a tea pot I might sketch in pencil first, but usually I just take a deep breath and dive in using a pen and focusing on the contours of things. 

Sometimes with this approach the placement of things gets messed up. If that happens I just continue on filling the page and creating a montage. Better for a sketch to be pleasingly inaccurate than annoyingly perfect!