Sunday Sketchblog #50

Gosh, I can’t believe it’s my 50th sketchblog post – that’s really quite scary, especially considering how little time I actually spend drawing these days!  It’s been a good week for my sketchbooks, because I went to the seaside for a few days and was able to be a lady of leisure…

…my mornings were spent in my pyjamas, looking out over the sea as I wrote letters, read books on my Kindle, and devoured hot cross buns and endless cups of tea; my afternoons were spent ambling around the little town and wasting time in the penny arcade.  I did make one excursion to the top of Beeston Bump with the vague idea of doing some sketching of the view… but the wind was howling so ferociously that I beat a hasty retreat back to the apartment (once I’d caught my breath after the climb up!).  So much for that idea!  To be fair, January really isn’t the best time of year to be sketching en plein air, the weather is generally a deterrent.

I did also tackle a couple more of the EDM challenges:

Still working in biro only in that sketchbook, which I’m finding challenging but actually good practice.  It was nice to work in watercolours again in my other book though, albeit briefly, and I must try and remember to use both books regularly in future.

Thanks for stopping by, and don’t forget to visit Hayley and Jenna to see what’s in their books this week.

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Sunday Sketchblog #40

Another week has flown by, and yesterday was especially busy.  I spent all day at Kensal Flea, and inbetween chatting with customers and stealing cuddles with puppies I did find time for a couple of quick sketches:

A woman asked if she could sit just behind my stall to sketch, and of course I said yes … but I couldn’t resist nabbing a quick sketch of her while she was working!

I’ve made no further progress with the EDM challenges, but Jenna is still going strong – her drawing of a finger puppet last week was fantastic!  Go and visit her at Timballoo to see what she’s been up to this week.

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Sunday Sketchblog #24

I don’t actually have any sketches this week, but enjoyed seeing Jenna’s sketch over at Timballoo.  I love that we’re both on that never-ceasing path of self-improvement, and both taking tips from other artists.  This week she’s been trying out Danny Gregory’s tip on drawing the outline of a group of objects first, then filling in the middle.  It’s a good technique, and something my art teacher taught me when I was doing my A-level.  I’ve been trying to remember how she phrased it, I think it might have been ‘draw the negative space’ or possibly the ‘white space’ – whatever you choose to call it, it does work as it stops you getting hung up on the small details too soon.

I’ve been reading a fair amount too, and have been trying out various different tips over the past month.  Last week it was starting a drawing with the objects at the front of the view, and the week before that it was putting down the basic shapes with colour, then adding the details with a pen afterwards.  Not sure what I’m going to end up trying this coming week, but I’d better do something lest I fall off the sketching wagon again!

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Sunday Sketchblog #22

I’ve not done any sketching this week, and thus picked up my sketchbook this afternoon thinking that I must do something for my Sunday blog post… and then had to laugh at myself.  When I wrote last week I said I’d not had a chance to do much sketching then either, but it turns out that my notoriously poor memory was playing tricks on me again and I’d overlooked a page of sketches done last Monday.  Just rough ones, done while I was on the phone with someone.  Usually I draw with my pen first and then add the colour afterwards, but this time I was playing around and put the colour down first in rough swathes before adding detail and outline with the pen.  Those two have turned out quite nicely, even though the hastily scribbled drawing in pen didn’t fare so well.

I must do some experimenting and tinkering with my scanner as the colours aren’t coming out very well (the leaves on that houseplant are actually green…).  Anyone out there got any tips on how to get a scanner to scan more accurately?!

Jenna over at Timballoo has been sketching her breakfast this week, hop over to her blog and take a peek.

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Book review: The Art of Urban Sketching by Gabriel Campanario

This book popped up on Amazon as a recommendation after I’d been browsing some other art books.  I was intrigued and added it to my wishlist with the intention of going back in a few days and buying it… in the end it was a week before I went back to my wishlist, and to my astonishment the book was no longer available through Amazon, and secondhand copies in the marketplace were going for upwards of £50.  I hunted around online and it wasn’t in stock anywhere, what on earth was going on?  The book was first published in February, how could it possibly be out of print already?

I was intrigued because the book looked interesting, and I hadn’t found a single bad review of it, so I asked to be notified when it was available through Amazon again and eventually, at the beginning of June (a good two months after I’d first seen it on Amazon), I received an e-mail telling me it was in stock.  I didn’t dither, I went straight to the site and bought it.

It took just two days shy of a month to arrive, turning up the day before I was due to go on holiday, and to my woe it was too big and heavy to even consider taking with me.  I was more than a bit frustrated and wondered if this book was going to be worth all the effort of hunting it down.

The short answer is YES.

Looking through sketches done by other artists is like crack for me.  I love to see the different styles people have, the materials they use, and to immerse myself in their view of the world.  Being a city girl born and raised I especially love sketches of urban settings, so this book really is perfect for me.

If you’re looking for a ‘how to’ book then you should probably stop reading this review and find something else, because The Art of Urban Sketching is certainly not going to teach you how to draw.  It does have a little section entitled tools for your portable studio, but that’s just a rough guide and just shows you some examples of what various artists have in their sketch kit.  It’s always interesting to see what other people choose to use, but the lesson here is that every artist is different, and you should develop your own distinct style both in terms of your work and the tools you use to create it.

The layout of the book is good, and I like the style of it: the contents pages are quirky and although that may seem like a small detail I felt it set a good feeling for the rest of the book.

The book “transports you to more than 50 cities, from Seattle to Sydney, spanning every continent and 30 countries” and it really is a wonderful journey (although I’m suprised and disappointed that Prague isn’t in there!).  The sheer variety of styles is both breathtaking and inspiring, and although this is not a how-to type book the artists do provide little tips and insights into the way they draw.

About three quarters of the book is devoted to the journey from country to country, but the last part is full of suggested themes to help inspire you, including skylines, construction sites and seasons of the year.

Each theme is illustrated by the work of different artists and show how a different theme can be given a different feel depending on the style.

This is a cracking book and if you share my fascination with sketchbooks then you must get a copy.  I couldn’t put it down once I’d started it and I’m sure I’ll be dipping in and out of it for years to come.

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Downsizing…

That there, in the photo above, is my usual sketch kit.  Sketchbook, watercolours, water brushes, and pens.  All of those things are pretty much essential (I do have a small pencil case which usually houses the water brushes and pens, but it’s gone walkabouts…), but overall do take up quite a bit of space in my handbag.

What to do?  Well I could downsize my sketchbook, which is something I’m considering for the next incarnation, but as I’ve just started this book it’s not really practical to change it right now.  So that leaves the watercolours.

The set I’ve been using for the past few years is the Cotman Sketchers’ Pocket Box, and it’s been a good little servant.  The selection of colours is fine, although I have added my own colours (Winsor Newton artists’ water colour, from tubes) in the little area that originally held a brush.  It is a bit bulky though and the Cotman water colours aren’t as richly pigmented as the artists’ water colours, something which I’ve been wanting to remedy for a while.  I’ve toyed with the idea of buying a bijou box, but they cost around £50 and that’s quite an investment.

Downsizing my watercolours has therefore been on my mind for a while, and when I was away in Norfolk last week I spotted a lovely little vintage tin in a secondhand shop and snapped it up at once as it was the perfect size for what I had in mind.

Doesn’t look very inspiring at the moment, but bear with me.  The transformation was an easy process – I bought some Fimo clay and fitted it into the inside of the tin, then made some wells in it.  This required a bit of trial and error as I knew how many wells I needed, but finding the right sized thing to make the wells proved challenging – in the end it was the round knob at the top of a wooden knitting needle that did the trick!  Once I’d made wells in the Fimo I stuck the tin in the oven and baked it as per the Fimo instructions.  After it had come out of the oven and cooled down I coated the inside of the lid with white enamel paint to create a mixing palette.

See, that looks much better!  The last stage was the easiest, squeezing my tube paints into the wells and letting them dry.  I did invest in some new tube paints for this (and invest is the right word, artists’ water colours aren’t cheap) and it would have been cheaper to just buy a bijou box… but it doesn’t take much paint to fill the wells, and I reckon I could fill each of them three times from the tubes I’ve got, so in the long term it does work out cheaper.

For those who are interested, these are the colours I’ve got in there (left to right)

• Top row: Permanent Rose, Winsor Violet, Winsor Lemon, Olive Green
• Middle row: Scarlet Lake, Winsor Blue (red shade), Raw Sienna, Hooker’s Green
• Bottom row: Permanent Alizarin Crimson, Burnt Sienna, Neutral Tint, Titanium White (opaque white)

And did the downsizing work? Well…

…size-wise, yes it did.  BUT (and it’s a big but) the new tin weighs a surprising amount for its size; I didn’t expect the Fimo to weigh quite as much as it actually does.  That’s a bit of a down side and I’m now keeping a look out for something else to turn into a watercolour set instead (I’m thinking perhaps an eyeshadow compact, so I can clean it out and use the existing palette).  I do like this little tin though, and will be using it from now on as, weight aside, it does take up less space in my bag (and even fits into most of my pockets) which is a good thing.  I might also, once the paints have been used up, remove the Fimo (I checked and it can be eased out!) and replace it with a more lightweight something or other.  We shall see.  For now I’ll leave you with a photo of my sketch kit as it will look for the foreseeable future.

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Sunday Sketchblog #18

This is my sketchbook

It hasn’t always looked like that, the last time I replaced the pages I also had to do some repair work to the spine (click here to have a look).  So, this week it was time to re-bind it again and this time I decided to do away with the spine altogether.  I prefer books that are coptic-bound because they lay flat at every page, so I’ve just gone with that and not attempted to tart up the edges this time.

It’s a little tatty, but there’s another reason for this: I’m on the lookout for a new sketchbook.  Something vintage (again) that I can personalise.  So there seems little point in making too much effort with this one!  I’m also rather hoping that I’ll fill this one up a bit faster than the last incarnation (which took over two years…).

What did I do with the pages this time?  Well of course I bound them into fresh covers for storage, and this time I used just plain brown paper and then Gocco printed an image on the front (I was in the middle of a Gocco project at the time so it seemed right).

So that’s another job jobbed (as my nan used to say), and the new sketchbook has already been christened.

Pop along to Jenna’s blog over at Timballoo and see what she’s been sketching this week.

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Snow, stamps and sketching.

This isn’t a studio week, it’s supposed to be a gardening week, but the snow we had over the weekend has resulted in me having two unscheduled days off work … which has thrown me a bit, I’m a creature of habit and I hate it when my routine gets messed up!

Yesterday was a bit of a write-off.  I spent the first part of the morning faffing around fixing the boiler (nothing drastic, don’t worry, just repressurising it), and then couldn’t concentrate on anything productive so ended up spending the rest of the day playing Skyrim.  Very irresponsible, but I did have fun!

Today, therefore, I was determined to do something useful.  So I made my way through the thawing snow down to my studio and settled down for a while.  First I tackled an illustration I started last week, and inked in over the pencil:

I want to add some colour to it, but was quite pleased at having finished the ink outline so left it there for now.

Next I decided to make some books, as I’ve not done that for a while.  I’ve got a market coming up in March so I really do need to get some more stock made up, and after a bit of dithering I ended up breaking out my stash of old stamps so I could get mucky with glue

There is something very satisfying about rummaging through a pile of stamps and seeing which ones catch my eye.  Anyway, I ended up making covers for four books, which I’ll add pages to next week.

And that, my friends, is the last crafting I’ll be doing in the studio this week.  The snow has melted, which means I get to go back to work tomorrow – yay!  I’m looking forward to being outdoors and a bit muddy, and of course getting paid is always a good thing   I might try and sneak some studio time at the weekend but I think I might be working then too.

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Sunday Sketchblog #5

As promised I finally have some fresh sketches!  My week in Sheringham was quite productive.  I didn’t get a chance to do much sketching en plein air (too damn cold to stand around outside!), but I did get back into the habit of keeping  a sketch journal of my trip.

Not hugely exciting entries, but they mean the world to me because I enjoyed them, and I do feel as though I really have got myself back into the right frame of mind for sketching.  I managed to start work on some other pieces too while I was away, and will be working on those this week so should have an update on them by next Sunday.

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Sunday Sketchblog #4

Well, what have I got to show you this week?  Difficult to say as I’m actually away from home at the moment – this post comes to you courtesy of WordPress’s awesome scheduling facility.

So, I’m currently in Norfolk… in the seaside town of Sheringham, to be more specific.  I’m taking a working holiday, painting a friend’s seaside apartment (he rents it out – click here to have a look) and hopefully also spending some time outside enjoying the fresh air and doing some sketching.  This means that, with luck and a fair wind, I should have lots to show you next Sunday, but it does mean that right this moment the cupboard is bare.

I have to have something on here for Sketchblog Sunday though, so here’s  a sketch I drew during my last working holiday (when I was gardening in Orkney).

It was done during a break in the gardening work, and it was the only sketch I managed to do in a whole week there.  Shameful.  My intention was to finish this sketch (adding some colour) as a birthday present for the friend I was staying with… and that was back in August and I still haven’t done it.  More shame.

It’s on my list of Things To Do (which never seems to get any shorter), and hopefully I will finish it before her next birthday!  In the meantime let’s hope that my trip to Norfolk yields more drawings than my trip to Orkney, and I’ll show and tell next Sunday…

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