Month: April 2008

This is the bare minimum journal/sketch kit that I toss in my purse and take just about everywhere with me.  It is pretty tiny and light, just an old eyeglass case full of goodies (two permanent pens in black and brown, felt tip pen, 7B Shorty pencil, mechanical pencil, click eraser, kneaded eraser in a zip case w/ yarn tag, ruler w/ yarn tag, and a tortillion w/ yarn tag so I can find and retrieve them easily), a journal and a watercolor kit.The Holbein watercolor kit could probably fit in the back of the eyeglass case also, but I sketch more than I watercolor in public so I left it in its own little bag.  The journal I'm using now is from Derwent and just doesn't handle watercolor very well anyway.  The watercolor of the peachtree I did in it ended up feeling like the paper was going to fall apart before I was finished painting.  Bummer! 

Here is a little watercolor of the view from my sunroom window.  The little peach tree is starting to get a bit of color.  So far we have been missed by the late cold snaps that seem to have destroyed the blossoms for the last few years.  Keeping my fingers crossed, maybe we'll have a few peaches this year.

These were done following the Inktense pencil demos on E-How.  Nice way to figure out what the pencils could do.

Another weird mix- Derwent tinted charcoal pencils, stickers, and rub-ons.

Time to say farewell to my little green handbook journal.  It is finally full and ready to be shelved.  To celebrate I'm posting some snippets from it to the blog.  Mostly the book is full of written narrative about our trips, etc.  A good portion of the other pages are pasted in ephemera from the trips.  Nothing like a map to tell you where you've been……

A fun watercolor memory complete with ephemera………

Another paste in and watercolor…….

Sometimes there are really odd combos of paste-ins, watercolor, stickers, and rub-ons on my pages….

The first is a copy of a postcard I received from a tea company some time ago.  I liked the brushwork logo and tried to do it with a Memory Brush pen.  Not sure if I like this pen, it has a really big felt "brush" tip.  Doesn't handle anything like a brush..

The second piece is a little manga-type monster bird I found websurfing.  It was in color and the red and yellow flames on its body didn't translate into black and white brushwork very well in this drawing.  Kinda dissapointing, but it was pen practice and it kept me out of trouble…

We ate out at Zio's and while we were waiting for our food to arrive I drew this little guy from my youngest's kiddie menu.  He felt it needed some color so he helped out and added a bit of red crayon.   The same kiddo never goes anywhere without his 'bears'.  We bought him one tiny stuffed mascot bear on a keychain as a souvenir a few years ago.  Since then everywhere we go on trips, he gets a bear as a reminder.  He gets bears for birthdays, Christmas,  anything.  We've lost count of how many he has.  He plays with them like other kids do GI Joes or Barbies, they have their own dollhouse, cars, and accessories he has hoarded.  His brothers and sister knit or sculpt toys for his bears to play with.  When we go out he stuffs his pockets with bears.  I've caught him going out in cargo pants with over a dozen tiny bears crammed into his pockets.  He even takes along an oversized beanie bear to use as a pillow in the van! With all these bears hanging out with us, it was past time to do a stuffed bear sketch for him.

I've been feeling pretty blaahh lately, with a lingering sinus/headcold thing going on so it has been hard to get into the mood to make a 'real' drawing.  I've kinda taken a break and had a bit of fun playing around with Retro-style, and manga cartoons from Christopher Hart's books.  It has been worth a few laughs with the family.