Tag Archives: sketchbook revival

Sketchbook Revival – Day 2 Session 1

In Miriam Schulman’s “Artpreneur Affirmations” I did what the affirmation recommended and embraced my inner weirdo.

Her work was full of lemons and leaves in the background. Mine? Not so much.

This lettering style is one that I’ve really come to love. “Weirdo” had to be inside something other than the box with the rest so “inner” is a shelter for the weirdo.

I followed her two color mandate. The pen squiggles came from another doodler several days ago. The dangling hair pen swipes are with the same Bic ballpoint, but held very lightly and whipped out and down quickly. Using the pen that way was very similar to the way I’d used the palette knife in my Moleskine last night.

The “I” in weirdo transecting the lower edge of the frame is a joyful detail for me. By embracing their inner weirdo, anyone can pierce the mundane constructs—not a new idea, but we seem to forget it so easily.

Civilization is built to drag us back to a norm…not and entirely bad thing, but that “I” still brings me joy.

Sketchbook Revival – Day 1 Session 1

The 1st session was with Courtney Cerruti. The title—Sketchbook Play: Exercises to Ignite your Creative Practice. We started with watercolor blending fun. I had some fun colors to start with in my palette, and with a little tweaking they filled the page nicely.
The second part of the process was working with a dip pen to doodle and draw in the shapes. I found myself outlining quite a bit. I used two different inks—the blue acrylic ink and a walnut ink.
I don’t work with a round brush very often. In my hand and on the page it feels very out of my control—perfect for this exercise though.
I really like the feeling of the dip pen scraping spikes of motion out of the blobs of ink on the page. To make these thick drops, I flipped the pen nib over and wiped the pen on the page.

The photo above showed me something I’d never seen before—the acrylic ink shows the scrapes in white from the drop area, not so with the walnut ink. That nugget of information is filed away in the gray matter.
The hat was intentional. When I pulled back from the page, I discovered the “woman” on the left. Looks like they were having an intimate conversation.
NAN. That’s my name, don’t wear it out.

I got all caught up in creating these little drawings and didn’t do the two other exercises Courtney walked through in the video—making a color wheel to continue playing with color, and blind contour drawing an object from different angles.

Color wheels and blind contour drawing are not new, but there’s something freeing about creating them in a group as part of a tutorial—we’re being given permission to be frivolous with our materials and creativity. That’s kind of the point of having a sketchbook…playing with everything, and making mistakes because mistakes aren’t really mistakes.

I might have to go back to do those, but I have another session to do. There are so many great nuggets of info in these Sketchbook Revival programs!

Sketchbook Revival Pre-Game Show

Mine is a little rough around the edges, but ready to go!

The main event starts March 21. In anticipation of the big event, we received a pre-season workshop to create a link stitched sketchbook.

Sarah Matthews guided us through the steps to create a link stitched sketchbook. She made it look easy.

I used 14×17 Canson mixed media sheets for the interior. Folded in half they make a very tall sketchbook…8.5 x 14. It will be interesting working on these legal size pages.

I might feel compelled to write a few “whereas the party of the first part” phrases, but probably not.

A Weekend

On the brink of another weekend, I’m writing about last weekend.

It was a not-so-busy, busy weekend. I moved from one thing to the next. There was nothing truly notable.

But I did pull some packaging scraps together to make something I’m looking forward to using for the upcoming Sketchbook Revival (dates yet to be announced).

Not my cover art. Art from the top of the “Hug” box from Penzey’s spices. Thanks to their graphic designer(s) for providing some pizzazz!
Cover materials courtesy of Penzey’s packing. Red envelope courtesy of Mom’s Valentine’s Day card. Interior courtesy of Grove Collaborative’s packaging.
Packing tape used to secure craft paper along the spine.
26 sheets
Potential. Opportunity. Tabula rasa.

Rose for 5-Day Challenge

I’ve been having some fun in my altered book. Sunday’s cosmo prompt filled in one side of the spreads hide-away page.

This morning I came across a Facebook post of a David Suzuki quote (text below in case you can’t read my mediocre handwriting):

The way we see the world shapes the way we treat it. If a mountain is a deity, not a pile of ore; if a forest is a sacred grove, not timber; if other species are biological kin, not resources; if the planet is our mother, not an opportunity—then we will treat each other with greater respect. Thus is the challenge, to look at the world from a different perspective.

David Suzuki

The flower challenge for Monday morning was a rose.