Daily Sketching – Wrapping up, very late!

So despite the yawning gap in my posting, I did end up sketching all 30 days of November. Many were just "eh" and a few were very cute and fun. All in all, I'd consider it a success. Here are the last five dats.

November 26
Another sketch in bed. Wasn't sure what to draw, but looked at my bedside lamp (which does not look like this one, BTW) and went from there. (I was sketching with the book at an angle, like when you write, and everything is cattywompus when you turn the book straight. HA!)

November 27
I've been making scarves like crazy which is the inspiration for this. See, she even looks a bit crazy. Seriously, NOT my best attempt at a face...

November 28
Very end of the day, had taken a loaf of bread out of the oven a bit earlier and decided, what the hell. I'll draw the bread, and went from there...

November 29
Look away! She'll get you in your sleep. AAAHHHH. Ok, maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but she is rather creepy. I attempted a more "big eyed girl" approach to a face and failed miserably. Gah.

November 30
Throw a party - it's the last day of sketching!! Oh, and also my dad and youngest nieces' birthday.

Daily Sketching – Doodles and Legs

Thursday, 11/22
I was in my art room working out some creative frustration with a canvas I made a year ago. Never much liked it and started to really hate it, so I did the right thing. Scraped all the crap off and gessoed the hell out of it, slapping down some paper and copies of drawings to cover up the mess and create a base for something I'll love. Ah... so much better. ANYway, after I cleaned up my hands and was ready to head back downstairs to check on some Thanksgiving preparations, I grabbed a piece of charcoal sitting on the table and drew on the paper I keep on the table to protect it. About 60 seconds worth of furious sketching. I love charcoal.

Friday, 11/23
More doodling. Figured I'd do an "L" since I already did the "K."

Saturday (bonus doodle)

Saturday & Sunday, 11/24 & 11/25

I think I mentioned before that I'm taking Jane Davenport's I Heart Drawing workshop. I fell WAY behind in the class, but am still plugging away a bit at a time. I need to work on hands and feet more, but I watched the arms and legs lessons and put them to use. I did the ballet legs on Saturday (that's a little wrap skirt on her) and then went all out and did the 50s beach girl I attempted earlier. The "skinny" version was more of a winging it attempt. This was much more deliberate. And she has legs. *wolf whistle* She's definitely more proportion than the first girl.

Daily Sketching – 11-19 thru 11-21

Monday, November 19

Sitting on the couch after a long day, needing to sketch but zero inspiration. Looked around and saw two candle holders. Sure, why not. So I sketched one. Turned out pretty cute, actually. Sometimes you just have to slog through!


Tuesday, November 20
Again, not sure what to draw, so I went to my Pinterest boards to find inspiration. Decided on a letter doodle. If you haven't tried doodling, I highly recommend it. It's a great warm up exercise and it's a really good way to let go. Let go of expectations, perfection, over-thinking. You just make marks, fill in with random shapes, have fun. It definitely helps me loosen up about drawing and just... let go.


Wednesday, November 21
I decided to draw a face with no idea what I wanted her to look like. Turns out she was sad. Aw, poor thing. Hey, sometimes you just have to be sad.

Daily Sketching – 50s Bathing Beauty, the Skinny version

After sketching this lovely retro-suited beauty, I decided I need to sketch a curvier version, so you'll be seeing that soon.

I used this image from Pinterest as my inspiration.



She is beach ready. I, however, have gotten a really good start on my winter "insulation". Oof.

Daily Sketching – Nov. 10-16

Here are my sketches from the past week...

Saturday, November 10
Dwight and I went for a walk that evening. I saw some dead grass on the side of the street and thought it was interesting. This drawing took all of 2 minutes, max. Very loose and quite fun to draw, actually. And then my cats chewed on the grass and got it covered in kitty spit. True story.


Sunday, November 11
Yep.  I was eating chocolate and watching The Avengers. What?


Monday, November 12
I hadn't just doodled in a while, so I decided it was high time I got back to it!


Tuesday, November 13
This was quite interesting. I knew I wanted to draw a figure, but had no idea where I was going with it. I drew her face, body and dress and knew she needed something. So I drew the basket of tulips...and then she needed an apron and boots if she was going to be out cutting flowers... and I went from there. She really needed an entire scene, so I made one for her. So cute!


Wednesday, November 14
This was FUN (up until the end... I'll get to that)  I'm taking The Art of Wild Abandonment 2 online art course from Junelle Jacobson and Christy Tomlinson, and in the first week (which I'm STILL on, BTW) Junelle has us just draw a bunch of circles on a page. She turns them into mugs, but I loved the idea of just starting with circles and seeing where it goes. I stared at the page and started doodling. First up, the flower in the bottom/center. Then the lotus-type flower where the two circles overlapped. Then I drew circles in circles... then an eye... and acorn... a cherry... the moon...

And then I took a sip of wine, choked, and spit it all over my laptop and sketchbook sitting near by. Seriously. My laptop smells like a wino. Oops.

Thursday, November 15
I worked really late. Have been putting in a lot of hours, and went to bed without having sketched. Wasn't going to let that happen! So I brought my little book with me to bed, head on my pillow, and stared at the page... what's on my mind..... RVs, that's what. There's a BIG RV show just after Thanksgiving every year and every year, my work is INSANE right about now. So I have RVs on the brain. I conjured up an old Shasta travel trailer from memory (not terribly accurate, but I got the "feel" of it), threw in a fire, chairs and some trees and thought it was darn cute!


Friday, November 16 (today!)
I had a photo of a 50s inspired up-do that I thought would make a good subject and figured tonight was as good a time as ever to draw it.


So there you have it... half way through the month already and I haven't missed a day. WOO!

Daily Sketching – Flower Pots, Wine, Books

Catching up.

11/7 – Clay Pots (from an image on Pinterest)


11/8 – Wine Glass (mine!)


11/9 – Bookstore (again, an image from Pinterest)


And this is what I usually have to deal with when I take photos of my drawings:

Daily Sketching - Vote!

So I started drawing tonight, not sure what I was going to sketch. Dinner was on the stove - sausage and cabbage - and I thought, "Why not sketch a cabbage?"



Why not, indeed. I didn't stop there. I added an onion, a bell pepper, squash and to mix it up a bit, a lemon.


And THEN I though, "Um, Duh. Why don't you sketch something topical, like Oh I don't know, the election?!" So I did this.



I voted. I hope you did, too!

Daily Sketch - Bluebirds

A couple of bluebirds, sketched from a random image I found online.



BONUS SKETCH
Yesterday, after posting my dress sketch, I felt like drawing a bit more, and she emerged. Isn't she cute?

Daily Sketch - Dress on Form

Hey! I'm finally putting my Pinterest pins to use! Here's today's sketch, based on a dress I pinned just today.



Just a note. The sketchbook shown here is just a little 4"x6" book I can keep handy. I won't be using it for all of my daily sketching, but it's a great size to take anywhere.

Sketching

I've decided that I'm going to do a sketch a day for November. I know some use this month to write a novel, grow facial hair, or express gratitude each day. I have only fleetingly longed to scribe a novel, have no interest in encouraging my facial hair growth (even for a good cause), and really like the idea of practicing gratitude, but I thought I'd use it to push myself into the habit of sketching daily. No grand schemes for creating a masterpiece, just whatever strikes my fancy at the time.

Since I'm getting a late start posting (but have actually sketched on each of the three days so far comprising this month), I'll post all three today.

November 1: Holding On

Just a girl I felt like drawing, flowy dress and hair, just holding on.

November 2: Red Carpet

I drew her face and she seemed like a starlet, so I added the glamorous dress and little clutch. I love her "finger waved" hair.

November 3: Balloons!

I had an image on my fashion illustration inspiration board and finally decided to put it to use. So cute!

Art Journal Play - Seeing Faces

In case you hadn't figured it out already, I love to draw faces. That's been true since high school. I would lose myself sketching stylized faces. I went a very long time without putting pencil (or paint) to paper but never lost the pull to draw faces.

Having immersed myself back in art over the last year and a half has reminded me of that pull. I've taken various on-line art courses that have me drawing more and more faces, specifically I Heart Drawing by Jane Davenport. Love her, LOVE this course.

I have a couple of art journals going, and in most, I have half-finished backgrounds mostly the result of slapping my leftover paint on a page as not to waste it. This is one such page. I was flipping through the book, saw this page and thought it would be fun to paint a face over the top. I wish I'd gotten a shot before I worked on the face, but you can see quite a bit of it through the face.

I'm mesmerized by her. Sure, her eyes are a bit wonky and she's rather lopsided, but I think she's darling, if I do say so myself!

Finished – Untitled (for now) Woman

I finished it - finally! I wrote a WIP post way back in April (!) and am happy to say she's finally finished.

Some of the WIP:

(where I left off on the last post-following is later in the day after fixing her nose)

I anguished over where to go from just about the point I left her in late April. I knew I wanted paper flowers either in her hair or representing her hair, but kept putting off making the decision. I was afraid of "ruining" what I'd started.

So I made paper flowers.

Lots of paper flowers.

And after determining that I did NOT want her whole head covered in them, came up with a pleasing arrangement, took a photo so I'd know what I'd liked...

Then set about painting her hair. I also decided to add some stenciled, if illegible, words to the background. I just wanted to break things up a bit, add some more texture and interest, pull in more of the mixed media feel I was going for.

The inspiration photo I used showed some sort of barrette in her hair, so I fashioned one for my girl out of wire and a paper flower. I also added a wire "earring" to help tie things together.

The flower "eye" is made from light modeling paste and a flower stencil. I'm very pleased with how she came out even though I got very stuck for a long time. I needed to let go of feeling like I was going to "ruin" it or make a mistake. As Donna Downey says, "Forward motion." Just keep moving forward and the right things will emerge.

Workshop Journaling – "Never Stop Growing"

So I have this bad habit of signing up for workshops and puttering out about 3/4 of the way through - or sooner. In this case, much sooner. I signed up for the Art of Wild Abandonment class with Junelle Jacobsen and Christy Tomlinson, and it's SO PACKED with information that I got a rather overwhelmed and stopped watching the videos and doing any work with the workshop assignments. It's a good problem to have in a workshop, I admit - so much information. I've loved everything we've done so far and I'm not even through week 2. It's a 3 week class, but don't let that fool you. There are at least 3 projects each week and about 10 videos. Each. Week. You might see how I got behind!

ANYway. I made a promise to myself to get back to the videos and get messy again with my art journal. I've neglected it in a terrible way. I want to create more often (every day!) and want to practice lots of different techniques, and one of the ways to do that is dust off my art journal, grab my laptop and supplies, and get the most from the Art of Wild Abandonment workshop.

Today I did just that and had the MOST fun with this page. Ahhhh. It's good to be back.

Materials used:
Gesso
Inktense pencil
Acrylic craft paint
Pen
While poster paint pen (Sharpie brand)
Distress ink
Roller word stamp
Various papers
Brown paper bag
Punchinella/sequin waste

Quick Tip – Using Partially Dried-out Modeling Paste

This is something I accidentally discovered today when I went to use my modeling paste on a work in progress. There was a big blob of paste on the edge of the jar left from the last time I'd used it where I'd scraped the leftover paste. Obviously I should have stirred the leftovers back down into the jar because that blob had dried out... but not all the way. I pulled it out to throw it away, but when I grabbed it, I realized it was the consistency of clay or play-dough.





*lightbulb*







I squished it together, grabbed a stamp, and pushed it into the paste. I'll let it air dry then have it on hand for a future project. Ta-da! Fun dimensional piece using materials I had on hand and was just going to throw away.

This is the original stamped piece I made with the large blob of paste. The one with the word stamp was done with paste I scraped from around the top edge of the jar using a pallet knife. As you can see, I use paint on my stamps and don't clean them very much. Ahem.

So, if you happened to have some mostly dried-out bits of modeling paste, give this a shot! You can attach the dried piece to a canvas or journal page, paint over it, layer with it - whatever you want.

*Just be sure you use LIGHT modeling paste because it will be flexible when dried and much easier to work with than regular or "heavy" modeling paste – that kind is very brittle when dry.