Sketching Right Along

During the holidays it has been a challenge to keep moving on the sketchbook project, but deadlines are motivating.  Here are images from the December and January sketchbooks:

 

December in the garden doesn’t give much inspiration at first look, and Nandina is one of my least favorite shrubs, but it turned out to be exactly what I needed for this book.
And this shows how my image fits in with the ethos of this particular book. As the project has moved along, I’ve noticed that the books really develop personalities and each book needs something different to carry it forward. Often it’s NOT what I’ve planned to do for the month, but when the book speaks, the artist must listen.
Who knew that something labeled as “Christmas Cactus” at the nursery or big box store could really be “Thanksgiving” or “Easter” Cactus masquerading as Christmas Cactus? This one definitely has all the characteristics of truncata and not bridgesii, which is the traditional Christmas Cactus. This image is on cold press watercolor paper and it shows the difficulties encountered when using colored pencil on highly textured paper. You get paper texture showing through and it’s harder to make smooth transitions. Hot Press Watercolor paper is the current standard for colored pencil drawings, but I still like the Stonehenge in my homemade journals best of all for mixed media sketches like this.
And finally, this is the full book. We are officially half-way through the project. I’ve over-emphasized the fleshy raised area at the center of each leaf, well, because I can in this project and I think it’s one of the things that makes these leaves interesting. Also, I rather like the pointy projections from the leaf body.

So that brings us up to date with the Sketchbook Exchange Project. What will February bring? Ellen Blonder, who comes before me in these books, said it’s like Christmas when you get a new book every month and then it’s like finals week when you are approaching your mailing deadline and don’t have your sketch done. That describes the project very well.

Ukulele Joy to the World

Who remembers the classic Steve Martin riff about no one being able to be sad while playing the banjo? Well I think that goes for the ukulele as well, and even more so when you’re playing along with a great leader (Andy Doub) and with a group of friends (Sounds of the Heart Ukulele Group). And it’s Christmas Songs you’re playing! Merry, merry! Truly, the weather outside was frightful, but the fire was so delightful. Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow.

Testing 1, 2, 3

This is only a test of my WordPress App from my phone. If this were an actual blog post, you might expect to finding something amazing or amusing or faintly interesting. Sorry to disappoint.

Lab lab, blah

After seeing an enchanting spray of this plant, previously unknown to me, at a garden club meeting several years ago, I immediately determined I needed to grow it for myself and draw it. Research revealed that the name of the plant, which had sounded at the time like a direction in the back court from a tennis partner: “Lob! lob!” was in actuality Lablab, or Hyacinth Bean Plant. Fast forward several failed horticultural attempts later and finally this season I managed to get the dratted thing to bloom but it’s a pale imitation of what I remember as a gently downward arcing blossom spray with several deep pink blossoms measuring 2 inches across set against deep green heart shaped leaves. All of the blossoms I have are borne on upright stems as you see and they are quite small, barely an inch across, with the admittedly heart-shaped leaves being a bit of a sickly looking green. Hm. Well, I am still going to draw this in my journal after all that work, but if I ever attempt to grow this again I will need to rethink the requirements of this plant and check to see if there are some cultivars with showier flowers. I’ll update this post when the journal drawing is done.

It’s a lucky day when…

You are attempting to put your hair in a tidy pony tail with an elastic band and the cheeky, bouncy band pops out of your hand and carves a perfect arc toward the bowl of the commode next to the bathroom counter and you watch with bated breath as it misses the bowl and lands innocently on the ground.  It really is the little things in life that you most appreciate, especially after a week spent fighting a beastly head cold.

November sketch 2022

The sketchbook exchange project proceeds apace. Each book as it comes along with more sketches in it seems to develop a personality of its own. It can be a bit of a challenge to find specimens that fit on the small pages of these little accordion books but this month I knew when I saw these seed pods littering the ground on my morning walk that I’d easily find one just the shape and size for this journal page and I also knew that they’d be perfect subjects for the ink drawing I wanted to do this month. Then I couldn’t help myself and added just a little colored pencil to highlight those fascinating wispy crispy structures curling about in the empty pods. I never had noticed those before.

Here’s an image showing the whole book to date:

I wonder what my book looks like now?

October Sketch

Here’s the sketch in progress.  I noticed the owner of the book had penciled in a rectangle behind her image so I thought I’d add a box behind mine.  This is a favorite technique of Lara Call Gastinger that I’d like to employ more often in my sketchbooks.  She does it with watercolor and it’s the work of a few minutes.  I did mine with colored pencil and it was the most time consuming part of this little sketch.

Here’s the finished sketch and below, the entire sequence to date.  The instructions for artists on this one indicated we could use one or 2 pages, our choice.  I opted for one page since I have had a LOT going on this month and want to get something done in my own sketchbook this week as well.

A big part of this project is encouraging people to work across the page boundaries to build continuity between images, so I thought I’d try it this month.   I’m moderately satisfied with that aspect of the work, but I hope that the next person to work in this book can integrate my image further with theirs. 

I have the November’s journal in my possession already and I can see that even with the same artists immediately preceding me, each book is taking on a character all its own that begins with the original illustration.  It’s fascinating to watch the images build upon one another as they march across the pages and to see how different the sketches are month to month from the same artists due to being inspired by that original image and subsequent entries.

 

 

Another UFO becomes a FO

Here’s a design from Mary Corbet’s “Spring Variety” pre-printed towel set. I am calling it Summertime because I need more towels for June, July and August. Not to mention Sunflowers and Zinnias bloom in summer. I see that horizontal crease but have been unable to press it out. You are warned not to press the pre-printed designs prior to stitching, and now I don’t want to compress the lovely 3-D effect of the threads by pressing too aggressively so I’ll just have to live with that crease.

I’m getting close to having a towel for every month, which was my initial goal for this project. What to embroider after that? Honestly, I think I’ll just keep on with the kitchen towels. They are so much fun to work.

P.S. In crafting circles, a UFO is not a suspected alien spacecraft, but an UnFinished Object.