A Sketchy Life Wrap-up

Thought I'd wrap up this third -- and last -- chat on sketching with five tips that have helped me keep a sketchbook practice going.

First, it helps not to use a sketchbook that is too grand or precious. Otherwise I find myself pressured to somehow make every drawing a small masterpiece, to honor the expense or the caliber of the sketchbook. If you plan to add a lot of watercolour to your sketches, you are going to need good paper. But if, like me, watercolour is just a garnish, then you can easily get away with a cheaper sketchbook.

For the 75-day challenges I used inexpensive Daler Rowney 5.5x8.5-inch spiral bound sketchbooks. The paper was 65 lb. with 80 pages per book. Perfect for 75 days of sketching.

You can even avoid choosing a sketchbook by repurposing something else, like a novel with heavier paper for the pages. Lapin is a well-known French sketcher who uses old account or ledger books. It's worth taking a look at his work simply to marvel at how French men know how to wear scarves! And he's a straight-to-ink guy, too!

This Japanese language novel I picked up at a library discard sale has lovely thick ivory pages. It's called The People Who Wander at the Edge of the Dawn by Yoko Ogawa. That evocative title alone is inspiration enough! Here's a simple sketch:

And another of paper roses with a background of coloured pencil:

My second tip is to avoid drawing on the first page. Somehow the blank white vastness of that opening page is more paralyzing than any other page. By always starting on the second page, I ease myself into starting a brand new book. Often, once the book is full, I come back and do something on the first page. Just an additional sketch or maybe a title page to sum up the content of the sketchbook.

Here, I used a commercial "coffee ring" stamp and my own hand-carved tea cup block.

Thirdly, I try to decide beforehand what I'm going to sketch the next day. This is where a theme comes in handy -- fruits and vegetables, say. Or something from the kitchen junk drawer. There are also lots of 30-day challenges on line that provide a daily sketching topic. Those lists can get you sketching subjects you'd normally avoid. Like people! But one month, I challenged myself to draw a face a day.

Scary, right? (For models, I used random newspaper photographs.)

This one's from a family photograph and is slightly better but still mis-proportioned.

Another time, I brought home roadside plants gathered on our daily morning walks. Each day, I only had to keep an eye out for a single plant. And that brings me to my fourth tip. You don't have to fill a whole page in one go. With the roadside plants, I took a week, adding one drawing a day.

Here's the fifth tip. It might not be for you, but it's made sketching so pleasurable and is likely the reason I've kept sketching these past seven years. Go straight to ink. No pencil. No erasing. This way, there is no fussing, no second-guessing -- I just draw. For sure, I get a lot of wonky and off-kilter sketches this way. But I figure, over time, my hand, eye and brain will eventually click and the sketches will get better.

Jane La Fazio, a San Diego artist, offers a great on-line sketching course for beginners and she advocates pencil first, teasing out the drawing, and then going over the final pencil strokes with ink for a confident line in your work. If straight-to-ink isn't for you, her approach might resonate. During the six weeks of her course, Jane comments on every single sketch submitted, with warm encouragement and practical advice. These are two drawings I did using her method.

The most popular exercise in that class was to draw our shoes. What fun to share our footwear with other students from around the world! In the sketch below, I used a pencil for the shape of the shoe but then when directly to ink to draw the rosettes and bead trim.

It's worthwhile playing around with different approaches to sketching until one "clicks" for you. And this brings me to the last tip. While we can waste endless time browsing through Pinterest and Instagram accounts, the online opportunities for discovering how the "pros" do it are vast and encouraging. I mentioned it before, but Tara Leaver's class got me sketching with ink and an eye dropper! Now that loosened up my drawing like nothing else has.

And here's a bonus tip: Enjoy your drawings no matter what stage you're at -- there's no one else in the world drawing quite like you! And no pastime could be more accessible or cheaper. A pen (or pencil) and a piece of paper and you're ready to go!

A Sketchy Life: Part Two

There's much buzz about habit trumping inspiration when it comes to achieving goals. I think it's true. If I only sketched when I felt inspired I'd never have to buy another sketchbook!

Repeating those 75-day challenges I talked about in the last post made a quick sketch part of my daily routine, like brushing my teeth. With a theme established, like the tea cups, I had even less to think about. One time I did 75 days of underwear! I'll spare you the sight of my "flimsies" as my husband calls them, but I really did have fun with this one. Having sewn since I was a kid, an understanding of how clothing is assembled made the sketching easier.

Rather quickly I ran out of racy stuff to sketch and moved onto camisoles, socks and even accessories like belts and shoes. A bonus of sketching clothing is that you can do the front and then the back or scrunch it up and sketch it again -- so no excuses for having nothing to draw!

Next, the back of a rabbit fur muff, complete with zippered pocket, from my childhood.

And a "corset" purse from my dear friend Nancy. Here, I put an asphalt roofing shingle under the page to create a rubbing to mimic the tweedy bodice texture.

 

Those sketches are some of the "better" ones. Even going on to eight years of sketch practice, I still make many "duds". (I'm saying this in a whisper because it isn't the drawings' fault I'm not yet at the skill level I'd like to be!)

Poor cat! In real life she was a calico beauty.

And, in real life, these carving tools had straight and symmetrical handles! What happened to the fourth one? That bend is crazy! But I kept going and, must say, was happy with the highlights on the handle caps.

And a recent dud, a sketch of a lovely handmade fabric "pot" I received for Christmas. In the upper example I was so far off capturing the shape and the feeling of looking down in the pot. Creating the fabric's softly squared shape eluded me. The bottom sketch is only a slight improvement. But I enjoyed inking the rows of stitching!

But then every now and then I do a sketch that takes me by surprise. This gravy boat was done straight to ink. No pencil guidelines -- only my eye and hand following the shape. Did I really draw that?

I was also tickled with these feathers. (Sorry, bad pun!)

Here's a trick: Elevate your sketch by drawing on a toned paper, like the sketch below. That mid-range tone makes the black ink and white highlights really pop. Liking these scissors.

The page below was composed on two separate days and is still a favourite of mine.

Lastly, a recent sketch. I'd planned a whole page of date stampers but ended up finishing the page with chunky foam letter stamps. Still, I'm impressed I had the patience to draw the fiddly date stampers at all.

It's these surprises -- the evidence I'm getting better -- that keeps me sketching. Plus, once I get to it, the actual drawing is a pleasure -- meditative even. While truly looking and seeing it's impossible to fret or worry or focus on anything other than the pen moving over the paper. Give it a try. Before long you, too, could be reveling in zen wonkiness!

A Sketchy Life: Part One

Back in June 2013 an artist friend gave me a blank sketchbook, with the advice to "Draw in it every day." Here is the very first sketch. Done on my fortieth wedding anniversary, no less.

I really had no idea how to go about sketching. At libraries and bookstores, I'd looked longingly at art journals, with their beautifully composed pages and beguiling drawings. The same with on-line sketchbooks. I was pretty sure to fill an entire book with your own drawings required having started with private art lessons as a child and then moving onto a formal art education (with perhaps a degree or two thrown in along the way). At the very least, there had to be a trick or a secret process that led one to make that kind of magic.

Well, there is a trick. And that's both good and bad news. Because even for those born with a natural talent and inclination for drawing, that trick is to draw. A lot. Every day if you can. That's the only way to learn to draw and the only way to get better at it.

Sure, tips and lessons can speed up the learning time, and there will always be people whose drawings are better -- more accurate, more skillful, more charming -- to our eye. But that's true with pretty much everything in life!

A year later this same friend asked me to join her in a sketching challenge. For 75 days we were to do a daily drawing, in ink and with continuous line (meaning you put pen to paper and kept drawing until done without once lifting the pen).

Working in ink, I discovered, was immensely freeing -- I couldn't erase so there was nothing to do but keep going! And drawing in continuous line means really looking at your subject plus, by default, it lends a certain wonkiness to the drawing -- at least in the beginning -- and that is freeing as well.

Here's a bottle I did on the fourth day.

Here is another bottle done about five years later. Again straight to ink and mostly continuous line. I did lift my pen a bit, here and there.

There's a little added watercolour to liven up the sketch. My bottle is still off-kilter but I think it's a stronger image, with more presence. And I quite like the addition of the graphics. To me there is a sense of looking through the glass, something I wouldn't have been up to when I first started sketching.

Even early on, my wonky drawings made me happy! I still like this one:

For a few years, I kept repeating the 75-day challenge. Always in ink but not always with continuous line. During this period, I really did sketch every single day. (Sadly, I'm not as disciplined now! But I "intend" to sketch daily, which keeps me connected and, over time, the sketches and the practice add up.)

Sometimes I picked a theme for the challenge, like 75 days of Japanese tea cups. I struggle with drawing symmetrically so the little cups, which I had on hand to use as models, were good subjects. Using the same object was a chance to try out different techniques and media. Below, I collaged my own hand-printed tissue paper over the drawing.

 

Here I used watercolour (a challenge on the absorbent sketchbook paper) and worked on leaving the white of the paper for highlights.

The sketch below is done on a dictionary page first painted over with white acrylic paint.

Here's another done with with a Sharpie fine-liner, a thicker-nibbed brush pen and watercolour.

This one was done with a branch on our frozen pond. A bonus sketch!

Look how symmetrical that turned out! Why can't I do that on paper?

Sketching, for me anyway, doesn't go uphill in a smooth straight line. It's more of a zig-zag mix of good, bad, and sad. In the next post, more on staying the course with that aggravating up and down.

Take a Stab

(Note: This is a long chat and if you don't see a video at the end of the post, click on the post title. The post will open in your browser and you should get the video. I promise to be a little less long-winded next time!)

A few years ago I spotted something called "envelope inserts" on a business supply clearance table. The heavy card, used to prevent mailed documents from bending, was too good a deal to pass up at $2.10 for 25 letter-sized sheets. And it was 100% recycled and made in Canada to boot. I bought two packs with no idea what I'd do with them. But the other day I dug them out, thinking the stiff, rough-textured paper might make good covers for a book.

At the same time I was playing around with mark-making, using acrylic ink and cheap paper (from a roll of heavy-ish newsprint made for Ikea's kid art easel). 

I used twigs, a bamboo skewer and a few hand-made brushes cobbled from chopsticks and clusters of bristles that had fallen out of the boot scraper by the studio door.

I also had a set of leaf stamps I'd made years ago from a sheet of floor-laying cushion I'd found abandoned in a parking lot. (I admit I'm a magpie, packing home anything that looks promising for printmaking!)

Sink stoppers, being rubber, make great stamps too.

These are the four sheets I ended up with.

Nothing much, really. Although the striped one has possibilities.

When I looked closely, I liked how the ink had bled through to the other side of the thin paper.

It happened with the leaf stamps, too, and I quite liked that look. Putting aside the striped sheet and the leaf sheet until I could decide how to take advantage of the bleed-through, I was left with the two sad, muddled sheets.

I hoped cutting them up might somehow make them more interesting. The lightweight pages weren't suitable for my usual pamphlet stitch binding -- any writing on the page was going to show through to the other side. 

There is a Japanese technique of folding the page in half and then, rather than binding the folded side of the paper, you bind the open side. In effect, it doubles the paper into a single page.

I interspersed sheets of purchased handmade paper between the folded pages and got ready to bind them together using the Japanese Stab Binding. Long, narrow pages work best because the binding itself takes up about an inch of the page.

Although it's a simple binding, I need to follow directions in a how-to book (I'm using the 1997 Handmade Books by Kathy Blake) to get the stitching sequence. I won't try and explain how to do it here -- there are excellent tutorials on line and in books.

 

I've tied off on the back of the book -- I like the look of the knot showing -- but the binding can also be done in a way that puts the knot out of sight inside the book.

I designed the size of the book so I could get two covers from one sheet of the cardboard and the most pages from the inked paper and ended up with enough pages for two books. I like how, in the bottom book, the handmade paper hides the patterned paper offering a bit of a surprise when you turn the page. That's something I'll keep in mind for future books. 

As I flip through the books, the pages seem to invite a story. "Once there was a little fox..." If this leads anywhere, I'll let you know.