Hipstamatic and Recent Sketchbook Pages

On Sunday afternoon, wanting to go somewhere to do some sketching, we drove to Nixon Park Nature Center to sketch inside air conditioned comfort. Nixon Park Nature Center features a nice collection of taxidermied animal mounts from around the world. There’s a polar bear that you can see up close, a caribou, blue and black wildebeests and others. After arriving there, it wasn’t as cool inside as we had hoped. We also didn’t feel as much like sketching the animals as we thought we would. Brenda read over the many display cards with animal facts while I was taking photos with my rediscovered Hipstamatic app on my iPhone. I used the pinhole lens in Hipstamatic which produces wildly exaggerated pinhole type photos. A few of them are shown here.

Other than that, I still am feeling a bit uninspired with creating new artwork or sketching in my sketchbook. The progress of the illustration work on my current children’s book project is going very slow. Most of my sketchbook pages have been meditative types of doodles. Here are some of my recent sketchbook pages.

Weekend Sketching

This past Saturday, I caught up with my sketching group at Italian Lake Park in Harrisburg, PA. I hadn’t been sketching with the group for a few months due to a nagging medical condition which I won’t share here. I was the first to arrive and chose a bench beside the lake with a view of the historic water fountain, titled Dance of the Eternal Spring. A Google search found that the fountain was sculpted by Guiseppe Donato in 1909 for Milton S. Hershey’s estate lawn. Hershey refused the artwork and after going through several locations, it was ultimately installed at Italian Lake Park in 1971.

I chose not to sketch the fountain at first, settling on a home with a large tree on the other side of the lake. I had decided to keep my sketching kit small and easy for the day. I brought along my small crossbody bag with assorted pens with two small sketchbooks inside. One of the sketchbooks was an Uglybooks pocket sketchbook with bright yellow paper, which I chose to sketch with that day. I used two of my favorite sketching pens, a Uniball Vision Micro and a Pentel Pocket Brush pen. I was able to create the four small sketches shown below. Nothing fancy, just putting in the old pencil miles as they say.

On Sunday, my wife and I decided to get out of the house for an early afternoon treat at a local coffee shop that was new to us. I really just wanted to do some cafe sketching while sipping some coffee and eating a sweet snack. Brenda had a chocolate banana peanut butter smoothie. I had half of an enormous chocolate chocolate chip muffin and a hot coffee with half and half. I didn’t bring anything extra to sketch with, I just used the field notes signature sketchbook that I’ve been carrying around in my bag for months. I also pulled out my Blackwing red pencil to sketch with. The sketches are below, again nothing fancy, just putting in the old pencil miles.

Winter Nature Journaling

This past Sunday, Brenda and I joined an Eventbrite group for winter nature journaling. Brenda and I were both a bit rusty with not having participated in group nature journaling since last April. After hearing the lead person speak about nature journaling and watching a drawing demonstration, Brenda and I headed out in the opposite direction of everyone else and went about sketching an old railroad tunnel and bridge. I first settled on making a detailed pen and ink drawing of a tree stump while Brenda set up down below to sketch the old railroad tunnel. It was only 39 degrees outside but thankfully there was no wind. I really didn’t feel the cold while I was sketching with my gloves on.

I chose to keep my drawing simple by using my favorite ink pen for drawing - a uniball vision micro. I have one of these drawing pens stuffed in every sketching bag I have. Which reminds me, I need to order another box. After finishing the tree stump sketch, we had a little more time before circling up to share sketches so I made a quick little pencil sketch of the railroad bridge and tunnel.

I decided to add a little watercolor to the tree stump drawing later at home. I had been feeling major artist’s block for months now and though my little nature journal page is not a major work of art it gave me a nudge to get back to drawing.