INKtober

31 Days 31 Drawings

Click on image to enlarge

INKtober is a month long sketching challenge started by Jake Parker back in 2009, as a way to improve his inking skills and develop a positive drawing habit. 

It's grown into a worldwide initiative with thousands of artists taking up the challenge. 

It's super simple just do a drawing a day in ink. I literally just found out about this today and so before the day was over, and I fell behind at the start I did a quick, quick sketch. 

I'm hoping to use this challenge to improve my skills with the Pilot Pocket Brush Pen. This is a pen that has so many great possibilities.  It creates a bold, expressive line yet is also capable, if handled correctly, to produce very fine lines. It has a true brush tip made of individual hairs and light-fast, permanent black ink. 

It has a definite "look" to it.  I can't decide if I want that "look" to be "my" look, but I keep coming back to this pen so I guess there is something about it that I find fascinating. 

I'm working in a Moleskine sketchbook, because it has smooth paper, great for ink, and because I had one I started back in January of 2012 to use on a trip to the Clark Institute of Art. So the first few pages have some quick thumbnails and larger sketches, copies of masterworks but the rest of the book is blank. so, waste not, want not, might as well use up a sketchbook that's on hand, rather than get a new one. Plus there wasn't time.

The Moleskine has cream colored pages which don'[t seem to scan true to color so I've had to  fiddle with the scan in Photoshop.  Not really exact but the best I could manage.

If you decide to participate use the hashtag #INKtober then when you click on it you can see what thousands of other artists are doing for INKtober! Ah, the fun of social media. 

Besides INKtober I've been doing more nature sketching and have two entries I'd like to share from yesterday. 

Click on image to enlarge

 One Great Egret, one post, three views.  Pilot Varsity fountain pen, black and QoR watercolors. 

Click on image to enlarge

Same materials as above, and a family of swans. I was thrilled to see that the cygnets from the spring have made it to adolescence, and that mom and dad still stay close to them. 

The more I sketch live, moving animals the better I get at it.  Same as with everything in life, practice.   It's hard at first because I can guarantee that your sketches will be pretty wonky, but the more you do it, the more you train you eye and hand to work together and you sharpen your visual memory, the easier it gets to capture the animals form and gesture. And that's what I'm really interested in, the essence. If I keep practicing I think perhaps occasionally I'll also be able to get some defining particulars down too and that will be wonderful. 

Meanwhile I'll take every chance I get to sketch animals from life, something I deeply enjoy. 

Sketching Tree Swallows

                                (Click o the image to enlarge)  Pentel Pocket Brush Pen, QoR watercolors


Connecticut has some really spectacular natural wonders in the late summer and autumn. The most spectacular is the great tree swallow migration. There are only two spots on the entire North American continent where tree swallows gather in huge flocks of tens of thousands before they migrate south for the winter. One is in southern Louisiana, the other is an island in the lower Connecticut River less than 30 min. from where I live.  Beginning in late August the tree swallows start to gather in local flocks.  In the sketch above you can see one such flock that has congregated in and around our pond.  We have tree swallows all summer, nesting in the snags in the pond, but in late August they begin to gather in greater numbers.  Last week the entire flock rose up out of the trees agitated by two hawks.  The large flock is gone now, headed over to join the "super flock" 20 or so miles away.

Over the Connecticut River each evening tens of thousands ( some estimates say 250,000) of tree swallows perform what many refer to as a spectacular aerial ballet, often culminating in a giant funnel or tornado maneuver.  The Audubon Society says that the tree swallow roosting ritual is more astounding than the migration of sand hill cranes over the Platte River in Nebraska and the snow goose in the arctic.

Next week I am going on a cruise down the Connecticut River to witness the tree swallows pre- migratory roosting ritual. I'm bringing my sketchbook naturally.  I've looked at photos and videos of the event and they are less than spectacular and everyone who shares these emphatically says that the photos and video do not do the event justice and that it's just too big and amazing to capture on film.  That's when an event, captured through an artists' eye in a sketchbook can really shine.....capturing what can't be simply gotten with a camera.

Sketching at the Zoo

There's nothing more fun than sketching at the zoo!  It's important to keep it simple and loose as your models are unlikely to hold their pose for long!

Usually when I'm sketching live animals I like to start with a mechanical pencil and get a quick sketch for  proportions and gesture. That makes it easy to erase if after just a few lines the animal has moved or gone off into a shelter.  If I get a complete or near complete quick pencil sketch then I'll switch to pen or marker to refine. For the kangaroo, deer and giraffe I chose a burnt sienna waterproof  marker because it made a statement about those animals and their coloring so right form the beginning the sketch was capturing something of the subject.

(It's also a good idea to wear a hat, sunscreen and a vest with lots of pockets to hold pens and what not.)

The rhino above was done with a fountain pen (Pilot Falcon Flex nib) and Noodlers Bulletproof black. That seemed like the right tool for all of his leathery wrinkled skin.  The primates, who were constantly on the move were done with a Pilot Varsity fountain pen, which you can pick up in most stores for about $3, it has water soluble ink and can make beautiful tonal washes when you add a water brush.

Here's another recent sketch day from a different zoo.  Aside from the camel it was sobering to see that all the animals I sketched were endangered.

 The wolves moved around a lot and I was glad I had my stool because I had to spend a lot of time just watching them, and waiting for them to return to a similar position so I could continue the sketch.

The red wolf was my last sketch of the day and his head gave me fits. I finally had to look at a photo on the internet and use gouache and markers to get it right.

Sketching the Great Blue Heron & River Otters

Indoors and out animals are one of my favorite subjects!

Indoors, I was yet again at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, in New Haven, CT. This time in the Discovery Room where I could get a superb view of a Great Blue Heron in flight. This taxidermy specimen is suspended from the ceiling allowing me to look up at it and study it from a vantage point that would be natural if I were outside and one flew overhead.

I started with some very quick gesture sketches  so I could get a feel for the birds proportions.  I was sitting close enough to see a lot of detail, which seemed a bit overwhelming, especially since my goal was to really focus on the heron's structure and form. Outdoors I see these stately birds from a distance or through binoculars or flying overhead. They are very shy and rarely allow you to be close to them. thus all my sketches of them tend to be very generalized and I was hoping to gain some better knowledge of their anatomy on this sketching trip. Which I think I did.

Outdoors, I was greeted by a river otter in our pond. These fun-loving muscular fellows are always such a treat to observe. Top sketch was done just from observing through binoculars. The bottom two I was able to do from memory, and develop a little more with the help of some quick cell phone pics I took while watching him/her devour a meal.

Nature Journal Page

Shad is a big thing here in Connecticut in the spring. There's a fish and a bush and their appearance in the Connecticut River and along the banks of river, marshes, streams and in damp woodlands, respectively prompts festivals and plant sales!

Nature journaling is a type of sketchbook journaling. It, obviously has a focus on the natural world and it leans towards a more or less scientific observation, recording and identifying of your subject. I also like to fill up my pages with folklore and fun facts about the things I observe in nature. 

In this page spread I included the larger habitat, including a Shadbush growing wild, top left, a fairly accurate sketch of the Shad fish, (I used a field guide to help me get the particulars correct), and again a fairly accurate example of the flowers, buds and leaves form the shadbush.

Now, I'm not a scientist, a wildlife biologist, a botanist, a zoologist or even an official scientific illustrator. What I am is an artist with a passion for nature who considers herself an amateur (in the very best sense of the word) naturalist. My nature studies are for learning, documenting, and  remembering all that I see and experience in nature and as a guide to identifying larger cycles and patterns in nature, as well as the particular details of nature. Nature is a living, breathing moving, changing classroom, and these are my notes.

Here's a short list of the things I like to include on each page of a nature joural:

1. Date and time I am observing
2. location
3. weather, including temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction
4. time of sunrise and sunset
5. moon phase
6. the habitat ex. woods, marsh, field etc.
7. the particular plant or animal
8. details of fur, feathers, leaf, fruit, blossom or some other interesting part of the whole
9. the name of my subject and it's binomial nomenclature in Latin
10. notes of any distinguishing features or behaviors

Beyond that, like I said earlier, I like to note folklore, superstitions, natural remedies, bits of history that are connected to what I'm observing. For me that puts nature into the larger context of my world, or perhaps it puts me, and us into the larger context of nature! 

Sketching Signs of Spring

 My friend Sherri's goat had a kid a week ago and I couldn't resist starting my new sketchbook off with a sketch of mama and baby!

One of the things I love to do is document the seasons. I find my sketchbooks are great records of weather patterns, plant and flower bloom times and animal behaviors like nesting, and migrating.

The sketchbook helps me stay in tune with, and aware of natures rhythms. Like tending a garden it helps me stay in touch with the land and the environment that I inhabit. By observing and recording natural events, big and small I feel part of nature, as I surely am, but I am always in danger of forgetting and becoming isolated from nature in our modern, industrial and technology filled world.

This is the first year I've seen these wonderful hooded
mergansers in our pond. It was a very exciting moment when I
made the positive identification!

They join the wood ducks and mallards that we've had in the pond for several years now.

This year I've also had the good fortune to see pileated
woodpeckers several times in the past few weeks.

They are large and my friend Roxanne thinks they have a per-historic look about them and I agree. Their large created head and long powerful bill always remind me of pterodactyls, though I don't think pterodactyls are proper dinosaurs. I think they are simply flying reptiles.

2014 is the year of the Salamander in Connecticut and a NY Times article and on line slide show filled with colorful salamanders caught my eye. This page was a fun experiment with materials. The Stillman & Birn A4 Zeta I'm working in took the Faber-Castell Artists Brush Tip Pens so beautifully! These pens, filled with pigmented ink, work very much like watercolors because they are transparent and can be layered and blended with ease. a Green micron 05, and Iles de Cafe ink in a fountain pen, along with a white Uni-ball Signo and watercolors for the big heading.

All in all I happy with the way these

sketches are documenting the unique

signs of the season. I'm looking forward to daffodils and trees that bloom!

Sketching Outdoors in March

It's March. Spring has sprung, and the peeper frogs are peeping. Today it snowed, again. Sigh. On the bright side the snow has now melted and it's just damp and chilly.  It feels like Mother Nature is playing an April Fool's joke a day early.

I'm really, really looking forward to sketching outside in weather that is pleasant and doesn't make my fingers hurt!

A few days ago the temperatures pushed up into the low forties and I couldn't stand it any longer. I bundled up and went out to sketch.. The first two on the left hand page were done form the car. by the time I was done with those it seemed like it would be warm enough to go outside. Well sort of.

Realize of course that I'm wearing a couple of layers and a down coat! One thing I like are fingerless gloves with a mitten  part that you can flip over your fingers.

The sketches on the right hand page were done outside. By the time I was done I was chilled to the bone!

However, it was really worth it! It felt so good to be outside, in nature immersed in my subject. I was especially happy when a pair of Mallard ducks flew in and spent about 20 min. feeding in the marsh. The red wing blackbirds were calling back and forth and it felt very alive and sounded like spring even if the temperatures didn't feel much like it.

I'm working right now in a Stillman & Birn 7x10 Delta wire bound sketchbook. The ivory paper is a nice change from white, and it's a good size for this time of year when I'm sketching indoors a lot and when it's too cold outdoors to be sketching for long periods of time. I usually use smaller sketchbooks during the winter months because they fill up fast and the sense of accomplishment of filling a book and the excitement of beginning a new one helps keep me inspired through the cold bleak months.

I'm working with the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen learning to use it and experimenting to see what it can do. It creates a very bold line, which is very black and I definitely must take that into consideration. The marks this pen makes are not just delicate outlines or guide lines for filling in with watercolors, they have lots of visual weight and presence and therefore are an integral part of the design.

This was my favorite of the four sketches. I think that the pen creates a look reminiscent of a hand colored wood bock print.

It's March and while the calendar says it's spring (frankly, I prefer the old Celtic calendar and the way the seasons of the year are broken up in that system. Right now we would still be in Imbolc, Feb.-Mar. -Apr. a winter/spring transition time during which lambs are born and trees just begin to bud. The next season is Beltane beginning May 1st,( and encompassing June and July,) which is when the weather actually begins to feel like spring here in New England, after which we quickly move into summer). But I digress.

The task at hand for sketching this season is using a palette of colors that will capture the subdued and fairly neutral hues of the season without resulting in a gray, drab sketch. To that end I'm using this.......

A special little watercolor kit I made form this really cute mint tin! (If you want to know how to make a kit form a mint tin click HERE for the resource page and scroll down to see the step by step instructions) It contains just four colors and is known as the Zorn Palette. Anders Zorn was a Swedish artist of the 19thC who was known for using this palette in many of his paintings to great effect.

                                                                                                 This is a self portrait of Zorn at showing his palette. Below that  is a close up of the palette in the painting.

This limited palette of colors is basically a version of the three primaries with black standing in for blue. Against the warmth of the vermillion and yellow ochre the grays made from black and white easily fool the eye into seeing blue.

My kit is made with watercolors and I suppose you could eliminate the white paint but I very much like using titanium white watercolor. Turner, Constable, Sargent, Homer....all the great watercolorists of the 19th century used white, and since I love their works I emulate their use of white.

This limited, earthy, full bodied palette of colors works very well for painting the in between seasons of late fall into winter and late winter into very early spring.

Zorn used this palette in a great deal of his figure work, especially nudes, so this would also work very well for a life drawing class.

Limited palettes are very helpful for producing color harmonies and avoiding muddy passages. They also help you create unique and expressive color combinations since you;re sometimes unable to paint exactly what you see and need to use a stand in color. Try it sometime and I think you'll be surprised how much you ca do with 3 or 4 colors and how beautiful the results can be.