A Drippy Bear

I am super in love with my totally-not-waterproof fountain pen right now. I've been experimenting with it all week and am happily coming to the realization that I may have experienced a very "happy accident."

I love the absolute randomness that occurs as the ink separates. On my sketchbook paper it really only changes from dark blue to light blue, but on watercolor paper it can dry anywhere from a light violet to a super dark indigo. I am curious how coffee or tea will effect the dried color... must experiment further :)

Beetle watercolor sketch

This beetle was from my Fall 2011 sketchbook. It was originally intended as a study for a acrylic painting on wood to test a new epoxy-resin, but that painting never materialized. And I still haven't tested out the resin.

In other news, instagram was unveiled for android this week. It makes me very happy.

Lyrics in a sketchbook

Over the years I've learned that if I take my sketchbook too seriously - I won't sketch in it. Or, if I buy an expensive, beautiful book, I will always have trouble marring the pages. Took me 3+ moleskines to figure that out!*

For a sketchbook to function as a sketchbook for me, it's got to be cheap, small and preferably a bit dirty. Starting out with a less-than-beautiful book makes the act of filling it with quick sketches a far more sacred event. I'm making the ugly book beautiful, rather than making the beautiful book ugly.

If I start taking my sketchbook too seriously, (Symptoms; attempting to tear out offending pages, erasing too much, or noticing the desire to purchase another book and start over) I stop and write a bit instead. I fill a few pages with quotes, ideas, or random collections of text. Anything to take the focus off whatever images I added that I didn't particularly like.

This restores the balance for me a bit, and allows me to continue working in the book. The above paragraph is the lyrics to a Gotye song; Puzzle with a Piece Missing. It's an excellent song.
Adding this to my sketchbook took the pressure off some of the previous pages, and I can continue with my quick and dirty sketching.

*Note on Moleskines*
I love them, they are gorgeous books. But I can't sketch in them.
I use them for studies for paintings (especially the watercolor ones) or as list books. Anything that requires a bit more time and attention than sketching. My current sketchbook of choice is actually selfmade, with some help from this great youtube tutorial. --My books never look as good as hers though!--

What do you think? Any favorite books to sketch in?

A Sketch In Bruges

I was flipping through the moleskine I used while we were in Europe and I found this little sketch done in Bruges.

Being in Bruges was fantastic - completely disregarding the fact we got engaged there :) It's a smallish medieval city with winding cobblestone streets that snake around some incredibly old and well-preserved buildings. We spent most of our 3 days there without a map, just wandering about exploring and eating waffles. Every turn presented a different ancient church, belltower, or some other wonder -- so I did a lot of speed sketching.

This particular alcove was behind our hotel. The buildings were seemingly piled ontop of eachother and combined with the fog - made for a really neat scene.

Found an old sketchbook

Today felt like a good day to do some cleaning.

I was reorganizing our shelves, trying to make room for a new load of books when I decided to flip through the pile of old sketchbooks at the bottom of the shelf. I generally fill or swap books every 4 - 6 months...so I've accumulated quite a collection.

I soon found myself losing track of time, buried under pages and pages of memories and ideas that I had totally forgotten about. Most were laughably horrendous, but there were a few decent concepts that I'll probably resume work on.

The book I flipped through today was from spring of 2007, when I was back at Michigan State living in the dorms. I was having a ton of trouble with my masculine figures and remember spending quite a lot of time on my own trying to get my drawn men to appear a bit more manly.

This sketch in particular made me realize how long its been since I've spent time in a life-drawing setting, and how I sincerely doubt I could reproduce that form now. It's probably well-past time for me to find a life drawing class!

So I'll try to post something old each Sunday for a bit here (we'll see how long it lasts!) and I encourage all my creative friends to dig back into their stock of old work. It's humbling, humorous and a good way to spend a few hours :)

Day 8... twitching has commenced.

So we opened up the wacom today. Terrifying. And still no closer to a fix.

The lcd is definitely on (as seen by applying a flashlight to screen) but the backlight is apparently out. Or the inverter for the backlight it out. Without a reliable multimeter, its a bit hard to tell which is which.

The consensus was to send it back to wacom. Their customer service throughout this whole process has been awesome, although I don't think they approve of the opening of the Cintiq -- but we had an electrical engineer with us, it's cool. My fingers are crossed for a speedy and affordable fix!

In the meantime, I've been working on my entry for the Sketchbook Project as the due date is quickly approaching. I'm about halfway through the book, so I'm a tad nervous about meeting the deadline. But that's why coffee exists, right?

New work wednesday!

Wood, acrylics, gloss medium and a spray bottle. I love these things right now.

I am pretty interested in exploring this new process. I've always loved drawing lesser-celebrated animals (hello possum portrait!) and the method of layering the pigment with gloss has me pretty much entranced. I've started a few more pieces with heavy india ink application as well, but I've had to lessen my reliance on the spray bottle.

In other news, I am about 30% done with my sketchbook for the Sketchbook Project and am really excited to visit one of the tour locations. My theme is 'Time Travel' which has made for quite a few headaches thus far. Oh the paradoxes!

I am also trying to finally get my Etsy store up. I removed the store section of my website back in the summer while we were travelling and I have yet to find the time to put it back up again. I'm thinking Etsy might be an easier route at this point.

Moral of the story: So many things to do, so little coffee to be had!