Outdoor Sketchbook Class

Create-A-Thon 2017 summer update - Over June and July this summer, I took an Outdoor Sketchbook class at the Adams County Arts Council in Gettysburg. For this class, I broke out a new sketchbook and sketched in pencil almost daily for four weeks. I averaged about 1 - 2, ten minute sketches each day trying to capture the essence of the outdoor object I was trying to draw. Mostly trees and flowers, with a few urban objects thrown in.

This is very different from the way I normally sketch, usually drawing in brush pen, marker, or watercolor, mostly from my imagination, creating cartoon characters or making repetitive patterns. I learned some very good drawing exercises for sketching from nature using a light pencil technique - something that I definitely needed to work on. 

Another activity this summer has been attending my son Isaac's Portrait Drawing class on Thursday nights at Waldo's in Gettysburg. This class is also venturing out from my drawing comfort zone, though I have frequently gone to figure drawing sessions. When making figure studies, I usually focus on trying to capture the essence of the pose rather than a detailed portrait study. I want to draw something quickly, unable to focus on a subject intensely for a long period of time. This class gives me the opportunity to study the face and learn a thing or two from my son!

And lastly, I'm in the middle of another drawing challenge while also trying to complete World Watercolor Month. I'm participating in Sketchbook Summer, for the month of July where I'm working on filling up an entire 8 1/2" x 11" 110 page sketchbook (on both sides of the page). This has been challenging, trying to fill up an average of 7-8 pages each day to keep pace with completing the sketchbook by the end of July.

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Over the past few months, I've been taking a break from traditional film photography, and focusing on instant photography, specifically Fuji Instax film. I'm in the middle of 26 instax packs - a six month Instax Mini film project. I'm shooting on different Instax Mini Films including themed Instax Mini Film character frames that I've bought from ebay. I use different cameras in my collection, mostly the Lomo'Instant Automat and a Diana F+ with Lomography Instant Back.

Stay tuned for upcoming Create-A-Thon art techniques that I will be trying in the coming weeks.

World Watercolor Month

A very busy July for Create-A-Thon 2017! I have several creative challenges that I'm working on this month, one of them being that July is World Watercolor Month. I thought I would take the challenge of painting in watercolor everyday this month to get back into using my watercolors on a regular basis. Though I haven't been blogging that much so far this month, I have been very busy working everyday on my artwork.

I took a week of vacation in the beginning of July and while not trying to plan every minute to be filled with one thing or another, I did have a few projects in mind for my vacation. Because I'm working on several other creative challenges this month, I thought I would try to keep the watercolor challenge manageable by limiting myself to 6" x 4" paintings everyday. Last summer, one of the YouTube channels that I subscribe to, thefrugalcrafter Lindsay Weirich had a very useful tip for making your own watercolor blocks. I had purchased two 9" x 12" Arches Watercolor Pads at Plaza Art when they had a half price sale last year with the intention of making my own pocket watercolor blocks. I wanted to use them with the same Sakural Koi Watercolor Field Kit as mentioned in Lindsay's video to carry around for watercolor sketching when inspiration strikes. I was able to get the watercolors for about $5.00 with an A. C. Moore half off coupon and a reward club certificate.

I took one of the Arches Watercolor pads and cut it down to 6" x 4" sheets, totaling enough sheets to make four 10 sheet blocks. I then clamped the sheets together evenly on top of a heavy cardboard backing with clothespins and glued the edges with a hot glue gun as shown in the video. I cut down scrapbook paper that I had in my stash to cover each of them to make 4 cute little watercolor blocks.

Here are some of the paintings I've made so far this month (some are on Fluid Paper as well as Arches). 

26 Instax Packs - #13

26 Instax Packs - #13 - Pikachu / Pokemon Instax Mini Frame in Lomo'Instant Automat camera. It was Father's Day, so Brenda and I picked up my stepfather to take him to breakfast and go for a ride in search of unexplored areas of the Gettysburg Battlefield. I've lived in Hanover since 1990 and visited Gettysburg numerous times over the years with my family and more recently photographing different parts of the landscape. I've always been drawn to the boulders strewn about the battlefield and surrounding areas, and there is a special tree at Devil's Den that I like to photograph and sketch. Every now and then, Brenda and I will discover a new part of Gettysburg on one of our drives. I recently saw photos from another photographer of the Rose Farm barn ruins, but I was not familiar with that area of the battlefield, so it was this that we sought out to discover on our Father's Day drive. 

It was a much sunnier day than the last time I shot with this camera, so the outdoor photos turned out much brighter. 

26 Instax Packs - #12

26 Instax Packs - #12 - One Piece Instax Mini Frame in Lomo'Instant Automat camera. It was an overcast day at Evergreen Cemetery in Gettysburg, PA, just on the verge of rain. These photos came out very dark, I probably should have used the +1 exposure compensation on the camera. But maybe, the darkness contributes to the mood. I missed the framing a little on the closeup shots, but I usually just point the Automat in the general direction of what I'm shooting using the focusing distance recommendation for the closeup lens. I'm not familiar with One Piece, which is apparently an Anime Show featuring a pirate, but I liked the little skull and crossbones on the packaging when I saw it on ebay.

Ballpoint Pen Scribble Art

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Week 24 - Ballpoint Pen Scribble Art made with various brands of ballpoint pens in a Fabriano Venice 6x9 sketchbook. I've admired the drawings I've seen on Instagram and Youtube made with this technique and how a picture can magically come out of loose scribbles using a ballpoint pen.

After attempting a couple of scribbly drawings, I searched YouTube for other artists demonstrating their technique for some pointers. I also found a short, informative class on Skillshare called Ballpoint Pen Drawing: Scribbling by Alfonso Perez which was quite enjoyable to watch. The class was well organized with a section on different styles of scribbling, how to start your scribble drawing, and leading up to a final project assignment. I practiced the techniques he demonstrated and felt my scribblings were much more successful.  I was able to make a ballpoint pen scribbly drawing almost every day for the past two weeks, finding it to be very stress-relieving and rewarding. Though, I occasionally found myself with ballpoint ink on my fingers from drawing with the super inky Papermate Inkjoy pen.

Because I enjoyed this creative activity so much, I thought I would try a digital version with the Apple Pencil on my iPad pro and on The Slate that Brenda gave me for Christmas.

I made a free form scribble drawing on The Slate with a Bic Crystal pen, which was connected to my iMac at work. The Slate is a tablet where paper is attached to the surface and strokes of a pencil or pen are recorded on your iPad or Mac. See my review from earlier this year here. There was an update available for The Slate and it was much improved from the last time I used it. The Slate software, Imagink, recorded my scribbling so that I was able to export the video file for uploading. The strokes of the Bic Crystal pen were very accurately recorded in the Imagink software, though the line pressure was the same darkness in the file on the screen compared to the actual drawing on paper where some areas had less pen pressure than others.

I thought I would also try this technique on my iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil. I used the Procreate app, with the technical pen brush set at the smallest diameter. Scribbling with the Apple Pencil was effortless, there was no lag while drawing. The scribbling was much finer than the other drawing methods. This technique could lead to other variations of this style with different brushes in Procreate.

I really enjoyed this drawing exercise, so much so that I spent the past two weeks exploring it, and would like to incorporate it into my sketching routine. 

Next up in Create-A-Thon 2017, a year long creative exploration project - make a hand bound sketchbook.

26 Instax Packs - #11

26 Instax Packs - #11 - Pinhole photography with Diana F+ with Lomography Instant Back using Fuji Instax Monochrome film. I was in the mood to shoot some instant film and decided to set up a couple of shots around the house with things from my collection - a skull model that I just finished building, a troll from my mother's troll collection, and a dragon that Alan made from clay when he was growing up.

I made a few adjustments to my method of making pinhole photos with the Diana F+ from the last attempt that I made on Pinhole Photography Day. The previous photos had turned out very blurry due to the camera shaking when the shutter button would release after a long bulb exposure. This time I used the shutter stop to keep it open in the bulb position after placing a piece of electrical tape over the pinhole. This way I could make the exposure without activating the shutter button, and causing camera shake.

The results from this method worked much better. After shooting a few photos out in the grass with my skull and troll (I don't know what my neighbors think I'm doing) I went inside to experiment with taking pinhole flash photos. This was very interesting as I had not thought of doing this until I heard about it on a photography podcast. I like the effect that I got with the skull and dragon with the troll in the background with glowing eyes, caused by the flash. I should mention, this photo was taken with the Diana lens on the camera using the Pinhole setting, which turned out a little sharper than the Diana without the lens using the pinhole.

I was pleased with the results from this pinhole photography experiment and would like to try flash photography with my Ondu MKII 6x6 and Holga WPC. 

26 Instax Packs - #10

26 Instax Packs - #10 - Skyblue Instax Mini Frame in Diana F+ with Lomography Instant Back. Wanting to shoot a pack film, but not knowing what to take photos of, I spent and hour or so at Codorus State Park on a pleasant Saturday afternoon with my Diana camera. I still need to work on getting the right expsosure and composition with this camera, but I do like the photos they look pretty sharp when they're right.

Pinhole Photography

Week 22 - Revisiting pinhole photography and film developing at home. Last weekend I picked up my Holga Wide Pinhole Camera, which still had a half used roll of film in it and drove out to Devil's Den in Gettysburg to finish the roll. I wanted to try a new photo composition tip that I heard about on a podcast to get better pinhole photos. 

I tried positioning my camera so that there would be close objects and objects further in the distance to create a more exaggerated pinhole effect in the photos. I couldn't remember what kind of film I had put in the camera, I had forgotten to write it on the back on a piece of tape. When I got home I developed it in caffenol (a mixture of instant coffee, super washing soda, and vitamin C powder) and saw that there were photos on the negatives when I pulled them out of the tank. I determined that it was Ilford FP4 from the brick of expired film that I had bought off of ebay last year. Some of the photos came out well considering the age of the film, but there were areas on some of the negatives where the backing paper numbers had burned into the image.

This past weekend I got out my Ondu MKII 6x6 Pinhole camera that I recieved as a Kickstarter reward last year which still had a half a roll of extremely expired Kodak Verichrome Pan film left inside from a couple of months ago. I drove out to Codorus State Park looking for a subject and wound up at the rental marina. I set about trying to make photos that had the type of pinhole composition I was trying to achieve, without worrying too much about the subject matter. I finished up and headed home to develop the roll in Kodak D-76 to find that the resulting photos were closer to the type of pinhole photos that I wanted to create.

In the next couple of weeks I want to try creating pinhole photos in my studio with some of the things in my collections, with and without flash. I plan to revisit pinhole photography on my Diana F+ camera with the instax back from Lomography to see if I can get the same kind of effect I got with the Ondu MKII. A pinhole photography exploration might be my next photography project after finishing 26 instax packs.

Meanwhile, I will be getting back into my studio and continuing my Create-A-Thon year long creative exploration soon, it's just been too nice outside to be cooped up in my studio!

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.

The Sketchbook Project 2017

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I have been wanting to participate in the worldwide sketchbook project created by the Brooklyn Art Library for some time, and finally in November I signed up to create a sketchbook. How it works is that you purchase a sketchbook from The Sketchbook Project with the option of having it digitized, and you fill it up when you receive it using one of the themes or with whatever you like, following the rules and size limitations.

After completing your sketchbook, you link it up to the library online and mail it back to be included in their permanent collection. If you have purchased the digitized option, your sketchbook will be scanned and made available online for others to view. The sketchbooks can be checked out and viewed in person at the Brooklyn Art Library or on one of their mobile sketchbook tours around the country.

Here are a few pages from my sketchbook entry with the theme "All about me". The fully digitized version can be viewed here.