I successfully completed 31 drawings for Inktober 2017! They were made in the Sketchbook Project sketchbook that I will be submitting to the Brooklyn Art Library for 2018. The highlight of my Inktober, was on Halloweeen when the Mütter Museum reposted my Inktober sketch of conjoined twins that are on display at the Mütter Museum. My Inktober sketches are mostly cartoons of robots, aliens, and skeletons, with a few other things thrown in there. I used a dip pen with Liquitex Ink! muted colors for several sketches, but I fell back on my old standby, the brush pen, for most of the drawings. As this was quite a challenge, this was my Create-A-thon activity for the entire month. Here are all 31 sketches.
Urban Sketching
This week in Create-A-Thon 2017 - Urban Sketching. I have, in the past few weeks, been carefully putting together an urban sketching bag with essential supplies that I might want to use without carrying too much. I've found a light weight stool and had thoughtfully chosen which sketchbooks I wanted to carry. I have been a member of two Urban Sketching Facebook groups for a little while and I finally got up the nerve to join in on a meet up for each of them this past weekend.
On Saturday, I joined Harrisburg Sketchers at Fort Hunter Park along the Susquehanna River for a beautiful autumn morning of sketching. After completing two sketches, I introduced myself to a few of the other sketchers and enjoyed a couple of conversations about sketching, art materials and looking at sketchbooks.
On Sunday, Isaac joined me to meet up with Urban Sketchers Baltimore in Fells Point. Isaac had intended to work en plein air in oil, but was unable to find a suitable subject. I was able to meet a fellow sketcher in person that I had communicated with on Instagram. After completing a couple of sketches, I talked to some of the other sketchers, but was not able to stay to have lunch due to a prior commitment. I was excited that Urban Sketchers Global later reposted my favorite sketch of the day on their Instagram account.
It was a great weekend to get outdoors and try Urban Sketching, and meet new people. I'm looking forward to future events with both groups in the coming months. I think I might sketch outdoors on my lunch break until the weather starts getting colder.
Inktober 2017
I've made it through the first week of Inktober 2017, my fourth year participating. The materials that I've been using are a selection of several brush pens - the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen, a Kuretake No. 8 Brush Pen, and a Sakura MB Medium Brush pen. I've also been using several dip pens with Liquitex Ink! in several colors along with Prismacolor pencils for a touch of extra color. I am working in a Sketchbook Project sketchbook that I plan to submit to the Brooklyn Art Library when finished. The paper is somewhat light for heavy inking so I've been creating some of the drawings on bristol paper and taping them down to the pages with permanent double-sided tape. I've mainly been using my old sketchbooks as a source of inspiration along with the official daily prompts for some days.
I was on vacation last week so completing each drawing every day was pretty easy, but it will be more challenging when I go back to work tomorrow. I've already got my bag packed with an assortment of daily inking supplies so that I can tackle this challenge on my lunch hour each day.
Polaroid 110A/Instax Wide Conversion Project
I recently joined the Worldwide Instax Shooters group on Facebook and was inspired to attempt a Polaroid 110A conversion project. There was a post about a Polaroid 110A/B conversion where a hacked Instax 210 Wide camera was attached to the back of the Polaroid to take advantage of the professional quality lens on the camera.
I searched Craigslist and came up with this very nice condition Polaroid 110A with a Rodenstock Ysarex 127mm lens, only the shutter is a little sticky, possibly requiring a disassembly and cleaning. I've been searching the interwebs and reading as much as I can to get information on how I can do this and also the conversion project on my own.
I will need to gather a few items, such as a lens spanner tool, Ronsinol or denatured alchohol, and a healthy dose of confidence to tackle this project, probably sometime this fall and winter. For the Polaroid 110A/Instax Wide conversion I will need a donor Instax 210 Wide camera. Though I have one already, I would prefer to get another one as the one I have is in perfectly good condition to continue using.
Look for future posts about the project as I go along.
26 Instax Packs - #26
26 Instax Packs - #26 - Candy Pop Instax Mini Frame in Diana F+ with Lomography Instant Back using Splitzer attachment. It took me a few tries to figure out how to use this attachment, it was kind of confusing trying to get the effect I wanted with two halves facing away from each other. I also experimented with double exposures. I should have changed the aperture setting to cloudy as several of the photos came out way underexposed. The frame is very cool though, I would like to get more. This concludes my six-month #26 Instax Packs project, but I will continue to experiment and use more of the unusual Instax Mini frames available.
26 Instax Packs - #25
26 Instax Packs - #25 - Finding Dory Instax Mini Frame in Lomo-Instant Automat at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, MD. I thought the subject of shooting at the aquarium would be a good match for this character frame, but I was disappointed with most of the shots I made. I had thought that using a polarizing filter on the camera would cut down on the glare from the glass and water, but unfortunately, the aquarium displays were very dark and didn't reproduce well. I also forgot to bring my closeup lens, which would have made for more interesting shots of the jellyfish. I did manage to shoot two other packs of film that day that turned out a little better. Some were outside around the inner harbor.
26 Instax Packs - #24
26 Instax Packs - #24 - Solarization effect using the original Kickstarter Lomo'Instant camera with Hello Kitty Instax Mini Film. This effect is created by attaching the close up lens on the Lomo'Instant Camera, using 1m-inf focus setting, with flash, set at +2 exposure compensation.
It's an interesting effect, that is somewhat unpredictable, but then so is practicing lomographic photography. I think the results came out pretty nice, and I would like to try this again.
26 Instax Packs - #23
26 Instax Packs - #23 - Light Painting with Star Wars Instax Mini Frame in Lomo'Instant Automat. I shot through a entire pack of film in about 20 minutes one morning before work, experimenting with light painting using the Lomo'Instant Automat in bulb mode triggering the shutter with the remote control lens cap.
The light I used was the one that was included with Lomo'Instant Wide box set from a couple of years ago, I had never tried it out. Though light painting was interesting, I think it could be a lot more fun with a few of your friends and a small flashlight.
26 Instax Packs - #22
26 Instax Packs - #22 - Zootopia Instax Mini Frame in Fuji Instax Neo 90 Classic. I spent an afternoon with Brenda at the Maryland Zoo shooting with my Neo 90 and my Pentax Q10 mirroless camera. Because you can't get that up close with the animals (and rightly so) it was difficult to get good photos of what animals we were observing. There are a few photos where you can clearly see what animal it is, but I really like to fill the frame with my subject when shooting with Instax film, especially Instax Mini Film. The Neo 90 handled the exposure nicely with the sunny conditions, It was an absolutely beautiful day to spend at the zoo. The last shot of the pack was of my son Isaac just before starting back to college this semester.
7 Paintings in 7 Days
7 Paintings in 7 Days - Create-A-Thon 2017 update. Though I haven't been specifically focusing on one creative activity for a weeklong period at a time recently I have been making lots of sketches, taking lots of Instax photos and thinking about other creative ideas.
This past week, I decided to paint 7 paintings in 7 days - 5 x 7 size mostly, with acrylics, using my own photographs as reference. Brenda and I also spent one day at Rehoboth Beach and painted outside at Cape Henlopen State Park. I really enjoy painting landscapes, and want to work toward painting them in an impressionistic style. I like painting outdoors and would love to be able to do that more often, but it's just not possible with my current daily commute. Some evenings, it was hard to pick up the brush to get started, but I think that painting daily is the way to improve, no matter whether you feel like painting or not.
I think that I would like to expand on this activity and try painting daily for 30 days, not necessarily creating 30 paintings, but that could be my goal. The key would be to work in a small size, such as 5x7, or 5x5. I also have some miniature canvases, that could be fun too.
