Getting Back Into It

It’s been a while since I last posted, here’s what I’ve been up to lately. After going through a bit of a creative slump and artistic block during our move last year, I got back to the business of filling up sketchbooks and digital sketching. I tried a variety of drawing and painting activities and sketchbook filling ideas to get back on track. I took a summer landscape in-person drawing class this summer that got me into sketching and drawing nature with pen and ink. Specifically trees.

I find I’ve been spending more time working on a drawing than I did previously. I would like to get outside more to draw from life, but I’m still having a block in that area about where to go to sketch. Not to mention the terrible habit I’ve gotten into since the pandemic of not wanting to leave the house. But I do go out on occasion and snap reference photos for my drawings. My wife and I went to an antique steam engine show a couple of weeks ago but had to leave early, I had forgotten how hard it is to breath around the smoking coal-fired steam engines. I did manage to grab photos for reference for future drawings.

I’ve been out a few times over the summer with the local urban sketching group and my wife and I are planning a day trip out to the National Apple Harvest Festival coming up soon. I’ll be posting some of my sketchbook drawings in the coming weeks.

Derwent Inktense Pencils

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Week 23 - Derwent Inktense Pencils, which are much like watercolor pencils in how they work, but after activating them with water, the colors become permanent. Other mediums can be used with them to create interesting effects. 

I thought I would try to make a few cloud studies using Inktense pencils but the finished effect is not how I thought it would turn out. I found the pencils didn't quite blend the way I anticipated, thinking they would be more like watercolor. It was more like I was trying to color the clouds, and I think a different style of drawing would have been better. I do like the pencil texture showing through in the washes after adding water, I think this effect might be better suited to a different subject.

I then made a drawing of foliage with photo reference from Flickr, but I found it difficult to get the vibrant effect I was expecting. I think that it may have been the paper I was using, which was a Stillman and Birn pocket Beta Series sketchbook. Other water media seems to work well with this sketchbook though. The colors appeared more vibrant on the Strathmore Visual Art Journal that I used for the cloud drawings and an onion still life I made from photo reference found on Flickr.

After making the first couple of sketches, and not being happy with the way they turned out, I looked for ways other artists were using the pencils and tried a different technique with the onion drawing. I like this style of drawing with the pencils and I think they might work well with another of the techniques that I use - mixed media drawings with watercolor and Derwent Aquatone pencils. 

I will, for now, put them aside and maybe revisit them in the future for other drawings or journal entries when I start working on a memorial art journal for my mother over the winter and for the 2018 Sketchbook Project, that I'll be starting soon.

Next up in Create-A-Thon, a year long creative exploration - Ballpoint Pen Scribble Art Technique.

Reeves Water Soluble Pastels

Week 14 - Reeves Water Soluble Pastels 24 color set purchased for $10.50 at The Queen's Ink in Savage, MD. Brenda and I decided to take a spur of the moment road trip down to the Historic Savage Mill so that I could make pinhole photos of the ruins beside the Little Patuxent River and the only remaining portion of a Bollman Truss Railroad Bridge. We found the art supply store in the Savage Mill shopping complex and they had a nice variety of supplies, mostly stamping and inks as the name would suggest.

Working with the pastels started off promising, when I made a drawing of bright red-orange springlike flowers. My next drawing of a Sunflower using a reference photo, was a bit more troublesome with it resembling a picture drawn with a box of crayons. And the last drawing did not work at all, not what I was envisioning of tentacles coming from the bottom of the page. I feel that my drawing skills were lacking for that one and that I was a bit tired before starting to work on it. Some of the colors did not blend at all when applying water, with a crayon type texture showing through.

I used the pastels on plain watercolor paper in a Strathmore Visual Watercolor Journal. I think I should have done a little more research for techniques on how to use water soluble pastels - I had watched a few YouTube videos and one in particular suggesting a base of Gesso to be applied to the paper first. I have to admit I was very busy this week with other creative and extracurricular activities, not leaving me much time to experiment with these. I may revisit them in the future and give them another try.

I also attended a live model figure drawing session on Sunday afternoon, and have been participating in the Sktchy30 drawing challenge using the Sktchy App, but I'm going to have to forego finishing the Sktchy challenge, my mind is mentally exhausted.

Next up in Create-A-Thon 2017 - drawing with a variety of brush pens.

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Winsor and Newton Pigment Markers

Week 11 - Winsor and Newton Pigment markers on Yupo paper. I have to admit I was not very inspired to work on this project this week. I was on vacation, but felt very unmotivated due to the snowy, cold, icy weather. When I scheduled this time off a few weeks ago, I anticipated having springlike weather as we've had in February, with plans of going outdoors for a few sketching trips and photo making. I instead indulged in some much needed down time including numerous naps, reading and watching YouTube and Craftsy videos under the cozy warm blanket on the couch surrounded by cats. Tomorrow I feel I will be able to jump back into my daily commute, full workdays, and evening creative sessions with renewed energy until my next vacation with Brenda coming up in May. 

I managed to spend one afternoon working on a pigment marker drawing using a photo I shot last summer as reference. The photo was made at Codorus State Park using an OM10 camera with expired Portra 160NC film. The drawing was made on Yupo paper and that worked okay, but perhaps I'll use the Winsor and Newton Pigment Marker paper that I have at some other time when I feel like working with the markers again.

Next up in Create-A-Thon 2017 - painting with coffee and tea.

Drawing 100 People in One Week

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Week 10 - #OneWeek100People2017 - An Urban Sketching challenge to draw 100 people in one week, from Monday, March 6 through Friday, March 10. I successfully completed this challenge, mostly drawing from the Sktchy app, but I was able to make about twenty or so drawings of live people during the week. I started a new sketchbook for the challenge, an Art Alternatives 4 x 6 hardcover sketchbook, just the right size for making quick portrait sketches. My drawings looked cartoonish, maybe caricature-like, but I think they mostly resembled the people I was drawing. I have to accept that I am primarily a cartoon artist and just go with it. I mostly used a brush pen for the drawings, emptying two brush pens, and a cartridge of another by the time the week was over. I used a little watercolor on some of the sketches, which made them look even more like cartoons.

By Friday, after completing the One Week 100 People challenge, my sketchbook was almost full, so I decided to challenge myself to finish filling the sketchbook with people sketches over the weekend, completing another of my Create-A-Thon 2017 projects - to fill an entire sketchbook in one week. I may try that one again with another sketchbook later in the year, but with making one long doodle in a Japanese style Moleskine pocket sketchbook.

I completed another Create-A-Thon 2017 activity, to attend a live model drawing session, which I did yesterday afternoon at Towson Plaza Art. The session was very enjoyable and relaxing, completely different from my usual day-to-day graphic design job. This is why I am challenging myself to a year full of creative projects, to allow myself time away from working on a computer all day. I really enjoy analog art, if that's what you want to call it. It puts my mind in a different frame from my daily problem solving design work. 

On Saturday, Brenda and I invited my stepfather over for an evening of painting and pizza. We ordered up some Domino's Pizza, turned on the relaxation station on Pandora and painted for a couple of hours. I had envisioned my painting of a skull floating over a field of flowers turning out differently than the creepy clownish skull painting that it turned out to be. It was fun to paint though, I would like to get out and paint landscapes using my french easel. I had intended to do that on my vacation this week, but the weather is going to be snowy and cold.

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Next up in Create-A-Thon 2017 - Winsor and Newton Pigment Markers on Yupo Paper. 

Derwent Graphitint Tinted Graphite Pencils

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Week 2 - Derwent Graphitint Tinted Graphite Pencils. I heard about these first on one of my YouTube watercolor channels and then more recently on The Art Supply Posse podcast. I found a good price for a new complete 24 pencil set on ebay. 

The graphite pencils in this set are in assorted muted colors, that are perfect for nature drawings, landscapes, and portraits. I made a few wildlife drawings in my nature journal and a Gettysburg landscape, but I haven't experimented with drawing portraits (drawing portraits will be one of my projects this year) 

I liked the way the finished drawings looked, with the texture of the graphite pencil strokes showing through the washes created after activating the graphite with water. I got the idea for drawing the Maryland Rockfish and the crappie from a YouTube video demonstration on how to use the pencils. My father fished for Rockfish on many Chesapeake Bay boat trips with his buddies while we were growing up. He also took us fishing for Crappies from the Beckleysville Bridge on many summer nights. 

One of the things I want to create is a journal of bird drawings and paintings, so that prompted the drawing of the Bluebird. For the landscape drawing, I used one of my film photos from a day at Gettysburg last winter as reference material.

Next up in Create-A-Thon 2017 - Nicole Premieré Dual Tip Markers from A.C.Moore.

iSkn Slate

Brenda really surprised me this year with a Christmas gift that I've been eyeing up since I saw it advertised in my Instagram feed a couple of months ago. It's a new drawing tablet called "The Slate" by the iSkn company located in France. For week one of Create-A-Thon 2017 I've been sketching with it attached to my iPad Mini and MacBook Pro. The Slate can also be used in standalone mode for on-the-go sketches that can later be imported with your computer or iPad using the Imagink app.

The tablet includes a paper sketchpad, two clips to hold sketch paper to the tablet surface, a ballpoint pen equipped with a magnetic ring, graphite pencil with removable magnetic ring, and a usb cable for charging. My Slate also came with a nice carrying case with a snap closure with room to carry my iPad Mini. The Slate is very lightweight and of nice build quality.

The Slate works with paper attached, allowing you to make sketches while seeing the results in real time on your bluetooth synced iPad or usb cable connected computer using the Imagink app. Imagink has several tools with size and opacity adjustments and the ability to create layers. Throughout my testing of The Slate this week, I found both the pen and the pencil with magnetic ring to be very accurate in capturing what I was drawing. The removable magnetic ring can be attached to your own pencils, provided they fit the included adaptor. I've only found a few of my art pencils that fit, but a larger size adaptor is available from iSkn as well as a stylus called The Tip that allows The Slate to be used as a drawing tablet. I've added the larger magnetic ring adaptor and The Tip to my birthday wish list. 

The Slate can also be used on-the-go to make sketches that can be edited or imported later on your iPad or computer (pc and mac). Sketches can be exported from the Imagink app in jpg, psd, svg, png, bmp, as well as video mp4. I experimented with exporting different file formats, and found the files imported as expected for further editing in Photoshop and Illustrator, with layers also being imported.

I have to say that I really am impressed with The Slate and how well it captures my sketches, though I'm not really sure how it will fit into my creative workflow. I will be practicing drawing more with it and look forward to watching what others create using The Slate. I've included side by side sketches, actual pen or paper sketch on the left with Imagink files on the right.

Next up in Create-A-Thon 2017, I will be trying out Derwent Graphitint Pencils.

Funky Skeleton Drawings

We all know that I have a fascination with skeletal anatomy, though I'm not entirely familiar with all the names of the different bones. I'm especially fond of sketching skulls, mostly with an ink brush style pen such as the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen. I love the varying line widths that I can get with the brush pen. After completing a rough pencil sketch of the skeleton idea I have, I like to ink it in with the brush pen and then add color and texture to the drawing with watercolor pencil and Faber Castell Pitt Artist Brush Pens. I'm also quite fond of the of the waterproof Pitt Artist Pens with their bright colors and lightfastness. I'm thinking that I want to continue these goofy skeletal drawings and perhaps create a skeletal character that might be used on t-shirts, mugs, and such.