Durham Fair Sketches 2016

Sketches from the Durham Fair 2016 from Jan Blencowe on Vimeo.

This video is in high def, you can enlarge it to full screen , and pause on any sketch you'd like to see close up for details etc. 

One of the sketching highlights of my year is sketching at Connecticut's largest agricultural fair. The Durham Fair turned 100 this year. There have actually been 97 fairs, a few being skipped due to war or hurricanes (not much gets in the way of New Englanders and their country fairs!) 

Fair day is always so exciting for me. It's a test of skill, focus, creativity, powers of observation.  For me, challenges are fun. 

Every year I prepare, select a sketchbook, and decide on materials and a few goals for the day.

Here's what I decided on for this year.

Sketchbook

I went with a Handbook Journal Hot Press Fluid 100 7x10 inch spiral bound field watercolor journal. These are very hard to come by in the smooth hot press paper surface. Once again I have forgotten where I ordered it from and I searched the internet and still can't find one. The cold press ones are readily available though. In case you're searching for this, it's the one with the green cover. Blue cover is cold press paper. (and also very nice)

I like this size because it's a horizontal format, longer that it is high, which is great because most animals at the fair also fit those proportions. Cows, goats, sheep etc. will all fit nicely on a page.

I also love the very smooth Fluid 100 paper. It's not an outstanding watercolor paper but a very serviceable and reasonably priced one that I enjoy using.

Pen

I decided that the fair was a good time to really give my brand new Sailor Fude de Mannen fountain pen a workout. It's always a risk taking a brand new tool you're unfamiliar with to the fair but I decided to take it anyway. I did pack several other pens just in case it was a disaster. 

My Sailor Fude came with two cartridges of  black ink that are not waterproof. I ordered the converter so I can fill it with waterproof ink but it hadn't arrived yet. However, that didn't really matter at all since I love working with water soluble inks.

I know that almost every water soluble ink is dye based and likely to fade over time. Yup, bummer. But, the ease of creating tonal ink washes one the spot with just a water brush, and the ability to soften misplaced lines and "mistakes" really takes the pressure off me when I'm working very quickly in a crowded venue where a lot of people are likely to ask to look at my sketches. It's just a little bit of protection against having sketches that go horribly wrong and feeling crappy about people looking at my work. 


I also took my Lamy Joy filled with De Atramentis Black document ink (waterproof) for writing.


Paints and Brushes

I took my 14 color set of QoR watercolors and a few brand new Pental Aquash water brushes in various sizes. 

Pencils

Two cheap PaperMate mechanical pencils and a stick eraser


Miscellaneous

Mini spray bottle, paper towels, and a bunch of extra pens that I never touched. (They were there "just in case")



Field Bag

I have recently switched from my over the shoulder Eddie Bauer bag to an around the waist bag. I've  had it for a couple of weeks but my trip to the fair was the big test. I found it incredibly helpful to have the bag around my waist. My shoulder didn't get painful and I had an easier time finding my supplies because I can look down into the bad. It also has an attachment for a bottle of water, which is wonderful, except that I was so engrossed sketching that I forgot to drink until I stopped for lunch. 

This is the bag I bought. It might be a bit small for some of you but I am always trying to eliminate and bring only what I truly need. I can fit my wallet and cell phone in the bag also. This is a keeper. 


Process

Sketching at large, crowded venues with live subjects (or complicated subjects like at the natural history museum) is challenging and I have finally worked out a process that works well for me. I start with a very brief pencil sketch. This helps me identify the absolutely essential characteristics of my subject. It often includes things like the angle of ears, the shape of the nose and mouth, the slope of the shoulders and angle of the hips. This is typically a very loose, contour line sketch, with special attention paid to the things I just mentioned. This is also an opportunity to make changes if the animal moves, turns it's head etc. It also lets me quickly choose another animal (same kind of course) if the first suddenly becomes active but another in the pen is resting quietly. Generally, I leave the pencil lines as part of the sketch and don't erase unless there's a build up of graphite that's likely to smear. 

Next, I switch to fountain pen.I am not simply tracing over my previous pencils lines, but I am looking with fresh eyes, making new observations and correcting and adjusting, which is unavoidable with moving subjects.  I may also indicate lines for shading or markings. I include the ground that's usually covered in straw, hay or wood shavings, to place them in a bit of a setting.

I bring out the water brush and watercolors next. First, I work with the ink to create some tonal washes which helps create the form and pattern of light and shadow. Then I go right in with the watercolors. Sometimes I let the watercolors touch the ink and mix, other times I allow a bit of white space to remain so the watercolors stay clean.

One of the advantages to working with water soluble ink is that it does mix with your watercolors and creates a harmonious look to a series of related sketches. 

Once the color is dropped in I use a pen with waterproof ink to make a note of the breed of animal, or the farm that's exhibiting. 


Goals 

My goals for the fair this year were to give the new Sailor Fude a really good workout and to focus on quantity, creating as many sketch as I possibly could. That goal really helped me to focus, push forward and keep my sketching fast, lively and loose.


How Long Do They Take?

I got asked that question at least a dozen times at the fair. Here's how the day's sketching panned out. I was at the fair for 5 hours and 45 minutes. I took a very quick lunch break and spent a little time talking with a few of the exhibitors (rabbits and Shropshire sheep) and picking out a dozen bars of my favorite goats milk soap, I think that basically takes care of the 45 minutes. That leaves five hours of sketching. During that time I did 26 sketches, that works out to approximately 8 minutes per sketch, which seems about right to me. I think the break down would be something like 3 minutes for the pencil sketch, 2 minutes with the fountain pen, and 3 minutes for the watercolor. 

Backgrounds

All of the pencil, ink and watercolor work was done on the spot. Later that evening I added borders, backgrounds, a little more writing and cleaned up a couple of sketches. The mini lop rabbit needed the addition of white to help get him looking really fluffy and the Brown Red Modern Game Hen's head got too dark from the ink and I used an acrylic marker to bring the color back. The backgrounds were made with Faber-Castell brush tip markers, and a Higgins India ink marker.

Hope you enjoyed hearing about my day at the fair. I encourage you to sketch at YOUR local fair this year ! 




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Starbucks People

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Sketching people is a new challenge for me.  Or rather, a fear overcome (it's still a challenge though).

Since taking the plunge and making a concerted effort to sketch people, which necessitates sketching them in public, I've actually become a little addicted to the challenge.  After just a few goes I found myself much more comfortable and liking the "riskiness" of it. People move, they leave, they might come over to see what your doing and see that you tried to draw them and not like what they see.  That has actually never happened to me (yet). I think I am developing some unconscious body language that let's people know that I'm busy and they shouldn't bother me.  It's not rude body language, I think it's just sort of an authoritative posture of some kind that projects an air of I'm a professional doing work, rather than I'm totally enjoying myself and would love to share this with you so come on over.  I don't do it purposely or even consciously I just have noticed that when I'm sketching things I'm very comfortable with, like the landscape, people seem to come over all the time, but not when I'm sketching people. This is all conjecture of course.  Meanwhile I'll keep sketching people, my one "risky" behavior addiction!

More #INKtober

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#INKtober continues along and I continue to learn about myself, my sketching preferences and my materials.  Above Pilot falcon flex nib fountain pen and a light watercolor wash.

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This one made with a Pentel Tradio, which has water-soluble ink and a Kuretake brush writer in medium brown.  This was a bold and interesting combination.

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And back to Pilot Falcon flex nib fountain pen and Liquitex acrylic markers for the Northern Flicker and the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen and Liquitex acrylic markers for the Red Winged Blackbird. 

One of the things I am seeing confirmed over and over again for me is that I like to switch tools and materials A LOT. The choices are driven both by the subject and by the result I want to achieve. I also think my mood also dictates what I want to sketch which then drives the choice of tools and materials. 

I think it's really exciting to have so many options at my disposal, and I keep reminding myself that keeping a sketchbook is about me, enjoying my art!  

Sketcing at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City

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I've sketched at our local natural history museum at Yale University many, many times but never at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC. It's someting I've always wanted to do. After seeing Tommy Kane's brilliant sketch from the AMNH a few weeks ago, and buying a print from his Etsy Shop, (see the print I purchased HERE)  I knew that I'd have to make a trip there, and soon!!!

Just like the zoo I knew I would need to pack light.  Zoo trips and museum sketching days can be exhausting especially if you're not prepared mentally and packing a very light kit.  For me the museum was a 2+ hour drive into New York City. I went early on a Sunday morning to minimize the traffic situation. The museum has it's own parking deck so that's great, no need to walk half a mile just to get to the entrance.  The down side is that the museum is typically crowded on a Sunday, and it was. Really crowded by the afternoon.

With that in mind I knew that a sketching stool was out of the question. I would have to sit on seating that was already there or stand.  Most of the time I ended up standing. Comfortable clothes, and shoes are really helpful !  I  also packed a very light kit.  A mechanical pencil, a Pentel Stylo pen which has a cool kind of tip/nib kind of like a felt tip in a fountain pen nib with a little flex.  It makes a nice bold line but also is water soluble so you can soften and create tonal washes and combine it with watercolor, which is what I did. I like that because you can get a lot of volume and form to your sketches with just the tonal wash and then add just a smidge of watercolor to indicate the local color of things, and in a very short time your sketches come to life through value and color.  It's a good quick way to work and you get a lot of bang for the time spent.

The museum is ginormous...so how did I decide what to sketch???   This trip could have gone lots of different ways in terms of what I sketched. Here's how the day unfolded. We entered through the Hall of African Animals and I immediately knew that I wanted to sketch some of the more exotic ones, when else would I ever have the chance??  Then we proceeded to the Hall of African Peoples. As we wandered about I spotted the Masai man wearing the lion's mane headdress.  I was immediately drawn to it. What must it take to acquire an item like that, and what powerful symbolism is enacted by the one wearing it. Also, what a direct way to enter into the larger unity of living things. Many ancient and "primitive" peoples have rituals that entail wearing animal skins, helping them to tap into the spirit and essence of the creature.

Once that sketch was done, I began looking more closely at other African headdresses and ritual costumes. Fascinating. This was not something that I previously had,  any special interest in. But that first sketch opened me up to a whole new area of interest. Once the costume page was finished we took time to look at lots of other parts of the museum, have lunch and then I returned to the Hall of African Animals to complete the two page spread.

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We ended the day by viewing, what is probably the, most iconic installation in the museum, the blue whale.  Magnificent.  Then a nice long time in the gift shop before heading for dinner and the drive home.  I spent a lot of time figuring out the most direct and shortest way to get to the museum and wrote out the directions below the blue whale because I know I'll be going back! 

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 with Binoculars

Sketching in nature is a particular favorite pastime of mine. I enjoy being outside surrounded by the elements of nature, using all  my senses to look, see and discover what is all around me.

One really great help when recording nature is a good set of binoculars. If you're already into birding you probably have a good set of binoculars, if not let me recommend the set that I have.

Orion UltraView Wide Angle Binoculars

They're $150 and they are so worth it! A set of binoculars will open up to you an entire world that you didn't know was there. You'll see all kinds of things you've never seen before. One of nature's survival strategies is to be camouflaged, and hidden in plain sight.

So we really don't see a lot by just glancing around. So if you go outside and feel like all you see is a wall of green, and you think the out of doors is boring and you only ever sketch a postcard like view you will be pleasantly surprised and quite possibly dombfounded by what you can see and sketch using binoculars!

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.

Garden Journal

One really fun sketchbook project is to journal your garden's growth and progress.

Or you can sketch the growth and blossoming of your containers of patio plants, or the cycle of a blooming tree or shrub in your yard.

The interesting part of this project is to see and record the amazing changes and stages of growth and development that living things go through during the course of their lives. 

And, if you make keeping a sketchbook journal a habit, over the years you will naturally, and organically be recording the amazing growth and development that you achieve as a person!

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 with Ink Video

One of my favorite places to sketch is the natural history museum. There's one on the Yale University campus about 1/2 hour from me.

If you don't have one near by, a nature center is also a good place.  Usually I'm sketching from the dioramas but this month in conjunction with an exhibit about dinosaur eggs and hatchlings the museum is incubating and hatching  emu eggs! Seems Emu are the closest living relative to many types of dinosaurs.


The Sketchbook 

I'm working in a new sketchbook, a Stillman & Birn Zeta in size A4. That's a standard size that's used in the UK and most of Europe I gather, but it's completely new to me.  It's big which is what I wanted after filling two smallish books over the winter. It's size is 8 1/4 x 11 3/4 which is taller and a bit narrower than the usual 8 1/2 x 11 that I'm used too. It's hardbound and when it's opened flat that means I have 16 1/2 x 23 1/2 to work with and that's A LOT of space!

Ink Brushes

As I've been trying to find my way with the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen I began to get interested in using ink in a water brush to sketch with.  This makes a nice change of pace from using  a fountain pen or marker. I decided to try using some of my favorite fountain pen inks in a water brush. A water brush is a paintbrush with a plastic handle that you can fill with water and use with your watercolors set (so you don't have to drag a container of water around with you) or you can fill the handle with ink or paint or whatever else you'd like to use. 

I like the Sakura and Pentel water brushes and show both in the picture. I also show a Kuretake ink brush that is the same thing but comes already filled with ink, in this case mid-brown #65. The ink is usually thin and I handle it just like a watercolor wash. Sometimes I add water colors to the sketch too. If the ink is not waterproof or at least water resistant then just be careful adding watercolors as things will run and bleed which you might want, otherwise leave a little white paper between areas.


For the emu chicks above I started by sketching with a black marker to get their size, shape, and general pattern of markings. If you click on the image above it will enlarge and you can see how lose and scribbly these sketches are as I found my way in and around their shape and markings) Then I brushed over the sketch with the water brush filled with Lie de The ink which is a pale warm golden brown, the color of a nice Darjeeling tea, thus the name of the ink which translates to tea, or tea colored ink. The ink dries pretty quickly, so I can go right back into the sketch with the Kuretake mid-brown to indicate the darker markings. I waited just a little while for it to dry and then used a UniBall Signo white pen to add the fluffy downy quality of the feathers.

Painting with Ink a Video

If a picture is worth a thousand words than a video is worth ten thousand! I'm sharing with you a homemade video. That means I had to hold the camera with one hand and demonstrate the sketching process with the other hand. All in all I think it came out pretty well given the limitations to filming and sketching at the same time! Please bare with me during the few times the camera is not exactly focused on where I'm sketching. There's plenty of good stuff to enjoy and just a few blips when that occurs. It's free and it's fun and I think you'll find it interesting!

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.

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.

Click on the image to see it larger

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.

Click on the image to see it larger

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!

Sketchbook Journal Class Coming in June!

Happy to report that I will be teaching a Sketchbook Journaling class in June at the Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, CT

Class will meet every Friday in June, 1-4pm. What a great way to start off your weekend!

I'll have more information for you soon, which I will post in the Class and Events section of the blog. The tab for that is at the top of the page.

The class will be limited to 15 participants so if you're local and would like to attend make sure you sign up as soon as registration is open. 

I'll also be leading the Art-Bar Happy Hour at the museum on May 22, 5:30 pm, libations, light fare and you'll get a sketchbook to keep and use of supplies from the museums education center. I'll be giving a short talk about sketchbook journaling and some instruction to get you going that night! Here's the LINK for more info. Scroll down until you see The Creative Journal

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!

Drink & Draw

Drink & Draw

Last night I went to the Slater Memorial Museum in  Norwich, CT for a Drink & Draw event. These events are becoming more and more popular everywhere it seems! The concept is pretty simple, a gathering that is both a social event and an opportunity to flex your creative muscles.

We had a nice selection of wines to choose from, received a special museum wine glass to take home and enjoyed cheese and crackers and fresh fruit. About 30 minutes of socializing and meeting fellow artists and then into the museum to sketch.

The museum provided folding stools, drawing boards, clips, paper, pencils and erasers or you could bring your own materials.

Sketching Classical Sculpture

Above you see our venue. The museum was founded by William Slater in memory of his father John Fox Slater, a textile tycoon in the 19th century.

This snippet form a NY Times article by Bill Ryan published September 6, 1992 explains how the amazing collection of classical sculpture came to be...

" Mr. Slater hired an expert in antiquities, Edward Robinson of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, who went to Europe and visited leading museums to obtain reproductions of their best pieces. It was done by covering the artworks with plaster and then removing the plaster very carefully. Robinson was eminently successful. From Rome came copies of the "Discus Thrower" and Michelangelo's Pieta as well as the "Dying Gaul." From Florence came David. From the Louvre in Paris came Aphrodite, or "Venus de Milo" as she was commonly known. From the Museum at Olympia in Athens came Nike of Paionios.
When the Slater Museum was dedicated in 1888, it contained nearly 150 plaster duplicates of the world's best examples of creativity in stone and bronze."

In the article there's also the curious story of why fig leaves were added to so many of the sculptures and what the reaction was from the art world back in Victorian times. Read the article it might surprise you! 

Pencil, Pen and Watercolor Washes

When sketching such monumental sculptures one feels obligated to attain some sense of the proportions and beauty of the originals so I sketched in with pencil first just to make sure I was at least capturing the essential characteristics and form of each piece. When I was satisfied with that, I used a fountain pen with Noodler's Lexington Gray ink to ink over the lightly sketched pencil lines and then used some Maimeri Blu watercolors to add some washes and bring to life their warm, neutral patinas and the wonderful rich brick red wall color.

All in all an incredibly fun and happy way to spend a Friday evening.

Sketching Spring and Nature's Wisdom

Part of the happiness (for me) that comes from keeping a sketchbook is having moments in a day when I can focus on something beautiful for a little while and leave what's weighing down my mind behind.

Yesterday was the first day of SPRING!!  And not a moment too soon! We've had so much snow and bitter cold temperatures this long winter that nothing is poking through the still partially frozen ground yet. These two very traditional spring flowers, daffodils and hyacinths, came from the garden center. I love the little rustic baskets woven from grape vine.

Spring is a time of renewal and hope. Like the land in New England this spring I would like some renewal and hope in my heart.  It's been a difficult week placing my elderly mom in an assisted living/memory care facility. Those of you who have gone through this need no explanation.

Keeping a sketchbook makes me notice things. What I've noticed these past two weeks is that even though it is still very wintery out, Mother Nature is moving ahead with plans for spring. Robins are out of the underbrush and on the ground, the red wing blackbirds are back in the marsh, the blue birds are checking out nest boxes, and today the gnats are swarming.

This tells me that even though things look bleak and cold all around, it's important to realize that they will pass and to continue to makes plans for happier, better times. Isn't nature wise? Isn't keeping a sketchbook journal a wonderful thing that helps you see through the difficulties to life's beauties?

Today's page was created using a TWSBI mini fountain pen with J. Herbin Lie de The ink, Maimeri Blu watercolors, and Faber Castell Pitt Artist Brush Tip Pens. I love those pens because they combine so well with watercolor. They contain pigmented (colored) India ink, do not bleed through your paper, and are transparent, letting you layer glazes of color just like you do with watercolors. 

Happy sketching!

Creating Backgrounds on your Sketchbook Pages

Winter Blues

This is a recent sketch (Feb. 26, 2014) that shows what happens when the winter drags on and I'm starved for green and sketching time outdoors. I start to do all kinds of crazy things in my sketchbook.

Sketching nature is my favorite subject, but as the winter drags on and the snow is deep and the temperatures barely pushing above twenty  I'm forced to sketch the same views from my windows or find something else to sketch.

That's actually a pretty good thing because when I look back at my sketchbooks from years past I find that my February sketchbooks are often the most interesting and creative. Happily, adversity begets creativity.

So here's whats happening in this sketch. I'm working in a 7x10 Stillman & Birn spiral bound Delta series sketchbook.  It has lovely heavy weight 180 lb paper, ivory in tint and similar to cold pressed watercolor paper in texture.

 When I'm feeling cooped up or just plain un-creative and need to add some pizazz to get me going I will create backgrounds on my sketchbook pages to work on top of.

How to Create a Background for your Sketchbook Pages

I've tried a bunch of different things and like using Golden High Flow acrylics best. This is the High Flow not the Fluid acrylic. The high flow is ink like, very thin. Even so I tend to thin it down more so that the paint is very transparent and the grain of the paper shows through. Here, because it's still the dead of winter and I'm desperately in need of some sparkle I've thinned the high flow with Utrecht's  Illuminating Medium 
which along with thinning down the paint add just a subtle bit of shimmer to the paint. I squirt the paint and medium out on a plastic palette and use a brayer (like you'd use for printmaking) to roll the paint onto the page. That's a fun way to do things because you can move the paint directionally, and have areas that over lap and create layers and textures. Don't stress about this part, if there are darker blotches created when the brayer first hits the paper or if the paint runs out and the application get raggedy that's all good stuff, it's what will make the page interesting and visually rich.

Working  over the Background

If you intend to use watercolor or gouache over the background be sure to keep the layer of high flow thin or you'll have a problem getting the watercolors to adhere, they may just bead up on the acrylic. If that happens then I'd suggest that you switch to Faber-Castel brush tip pens, they're pigment india ink, transparent and look a lot like watercolors. I used both in this sketch.

Stencils

Stencils are fun and make me happy. Sometimes I make my own but the one I used here (which is supposed to depict cracked glass but I think looks like a spider's web) I bought.

White over Dark in your Sketchbook

Using white over a dark area always brings a "pop" to a sketchbook page and I try to incorporate that as much as possible. White markers can be hard to come by and some work better than others. The whites in the sketch were created Using Daniel Smith titanium white watercolor and Uni-Ball Signo White pen.

Sketching Inspiration

Nature is glorious and inspires me. Snow is wonderful, the first couple of times in the winter, but frozen snow and freezing temps lose their appeal after a couple of months. The great thing about keeping a sketchbook journal is that it helps you find inspiration in every day things. The play of thin wintery light through the empty wine bottles and the little plant silhouetted on the studio window sill, plus  the incorporation of the endless snow outside and the cobwebs which perfectly captured the cobwebs in my mind at the end of this long, long winter helped me create a page that captures the essence of this moment in time and that makes me happy!

Welcome to a Happy Sketching Place

What is The Sketchbook Hypothesis ?

Welcome and thank you so very much for joining me at the Sketchbook Hypothesis.  The sketchbook part is obvious, and the hypothesis part is really very simple, I believe that making art makes you happy, and I keep filling sketchbooks to prove that!  The looking, the seeing, the doing, the making conjure up a wonderful happy state of mind that was much more natural to us when we were children, but it's one we desperately need to cultivate to keep our busy, stressful adult lives in balance.

Why Sketching?

Sketching is to the visual arts as an impromptu jazz jam session is to music. It's spontaneous, free flowing, experimental, exciting,  lively, and often unconventional. It can also be calming, meditative and focusing.

Maria Montessori taught us that Play is the work of the child.  I think that sketching is the play of the adult and just as a child's play teaches them many things in a natural, fun way that makes them happy, sketching does the same for adults.

Sketching is accessible. The materials needed are minimal, and relatively inexpensive. It's portable and can be done anywhere. Sketching has never ending possibilities. It can also be incredible meaningful helping us see the beauty in the ordinary, and capture moments of life that would otherwise be lost forever.

By looking closely, which is necessary for sketching, we see, and learn to cherish so much of life that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Who can Sketch? 

Everyone. Period. Yup, even you. The oldest known cave art comes from the Cave of El Castillo in northern Spain, and may be more than 40,000 years old. None of the artists ever went to art school. The work is breathtaking and powerful.

This particular image known as Horses from the Hillaire Chamber, Chauvet cave, is 30,000 years old. 

Drawing is a skill, and in the 19th century was taught as a regular part of a bourgeois education and most educated people could draw, and paint with watercolors  reasonably well. Certainly well enough to keep a travel sketchbook or nature journal two popular pastimes of the era.

Just begin. The magic and happiness is in the doing, not necessarily in the finished product. Making art will make you happy.