Illustration Friday : A Tree

I love trees, and as I meandered through my saved images I came up on several but choose to share this one of a tree I sketched in Yosemite Village a couple of years ago.

A tree in Yosemite Village, I named it ‘curly cue’.

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ART Journaling Step by Step

Every once in a while I get around to finishing a page or two that I had previously started. So today I decided I take one page through the steps of completion, especially since I haven’t posted in a while.

A month or so ago I was on a crazed mission doing many, many faces & now I can share my process through completion with you. I hope you’ll find it easy enough to try just for fun. In this case I’m thinking they can easily be used to print some postcards/note cards for myself or as gifts! All you’ll need are simple supplies: Waterproof pen, watercolor or colored pencils, and or markers.

Step one:

Complete a contour drawing of a face (or flower)  in waterproof ink using an old photo (magazine or newspaper). For sure mine never come out looking even close to the reference material no matter what, so don’t even go there.

 

Step 2:

Add Watercolor washes (or colored pencils, markers – whatever you wish)!

 

Step 3:

Using hand lettering or a stencil with pencil, add your message and design. Here I decided to add the word ‘Think” with dots, and I’ve now painted the background with brushed on ink.

 

 

Step 4:

Now finish up with whatever you’d like to use pencils, pens, colors. Whatever suits your fancy.

 

 

 

Here I’ve used Faber-Castell Pitt Pens (one of my fav’s). And, I’m thinking this can be used for special notes to my friends who have survived breast cancer, or a gift of note cards to them so they can share with others.

Have a wonderful day, and keep sketching my friends!

 

 

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Illustration Friday Challenges

Once again it’s been a couple of weeks since I managed to catch up long enough to actually complete & be ready to post a submission to IF. This week..finally! Plus I had a lot of fun doing it. A few minutes in my studio to sketch the bottom two rows (about 1/3 of the length) of my prize purchase of a bookshelf (going out of business at Borders) for my studio. I am truly in love with this bookshelf and of course all the reference books, magazines & such that it holds. I hope you enjoy my submission, as much as I enjoyed doing it and writing about it.

In my studio you will find…….

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Squeezing in the time to sketch…

Oh wow, I’ve been busy for a change and as I struggle with the balance of working on a commissioned piece I’ve thought about all the freedom I have (normally) to just sketch & play when I want to ….. most of each day. I really haven’t kept up with my normal Everyday Matter’s group & missed 2 weeks of Illustration Friday challenges (oh no), but I have indeed been sketching everyday no matter what. So I just decided to at least share the dancing of my pen, and acknowledge that it is truly hard to work everything in but it is really important for me to take a little time NO MATTER what else to sketch just for myself. I hope that you take time too!

Keep sketching my friends!

The fireplace mantle in my family room…watching TV?

Using up the blue ink?

‘rambling on’

Old Oak in the Park…listening to the birds!

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Travel Journaling: Reno or ‘bust!

Just completed a short trip into Reno, NV! I of course reverted to my standard ‘dairy style’ of journaling the tid-bits of the day on the fly. I love documenting the daily minutia, and thus started out with a 2 page spread with a hand drawn map to fill in as we drove along.

Page 1 of map

Page 2 of map spread

During our stay at the Grand Sierra Casino & Resort, I did several sketches in the early morning hours near the Starbucks 🙂 of course, while I sipped on my morning latte and listened to the great background music! I had fun sketching folks, but often they catch on and try to cover their faces….so, I gave up on the folks and just did sketches of the immediate area. I painted them in watercolor after we returned home.

Casino Sketch

AM walk for latte 🙂

I was thrilled to stop in Boomtown on the way back. I actually recouped my previous losses. Then, on the way back home a bit of sketching in the van while Norm drove. We really had a great trip, nice & relaxing and by the way if you ever make a trip there make sure you do the National Automobile Museum. It’s awesome!

Have a great day, and keep sketching my friends!

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ART Journaling or Travel Journaling ‘what’s the difference’?

Over the past week I’ve been busy working on my background ‘faces’ project and began thinking about how the differences in process are directly connected to ‘my personal journey’. As I observed  the changes in my habits (ha) first I realized that ANY change can be just the boost you need to rekindle the fire in your journaling. In this case fire is good, and I believe these changes have helped me become more creative. Although now, instead of 1 journal with everything in it, I have again slipped back into separate journals. It seems to be something I do periodically, really don’t have a clue as to why.

A background page ‘face’ painted & ready to go!

I Am Thankful for Life! EDM#42

A journal page complete!

One journal now is more or less just for writing, and it’s not really up to date.  It’s just there in case I decide to write more extensively, and at the moment I have 3 different ART  journals going with mixes of the Everyday Matters Challenges, Illustration Friday works, and many, many faces all in various degrees of completion to use  for backgrounds.  I’m thinking, ah, this craziness must be because we haven’t taken a road trip in a while, I’ll know soon because we’re getting ready for one.  So, I now recognize that for me the difference truly is in the process I use and preparing backgrounds to journal INTO for me is ART JOURNALING, and doing illustrative journaling ‘on the go’, as it happens or where I am at the time seems to enable me to document my life and thoughts more along the TRAVEL JOURNALING path. Well at least I think I have it isolated in my mine anyway.

I hope you enjoy, and maybe try making some for yourself.  It’s the little sparks that start the fire.  I’m looking forward to this upcoming road trip because I think it will validate my current thoughts, and of course my TRAVEL JOURNAL will become fodder for an upcoming entry.

Keep playing, it’s good for your soul.

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Drawing on life, and sketching like a crazy person….

In my last post I chatted about making quick sketches from magazines and shared a couple of my ‘journal pages’. Since Tuesday I’ve completed 22 faces (of course they are in various stages of completion) but complete as far as the line work is considered, and in my madness I moved on to just making them up as I went along. Anyway today I spent time scanning a bunch in BEFORE I painted or wrote on them (gee what a concept) and decided I’d share. Hope you enjoy! Keep sketching my friends, Donna

   

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Sketching Every Day!

Amazing, it’s been several days again but I’ve completed many pieces of work too! I feel positively ‘productive’. Playing around with different media and different paper has made the time feel like a new adventure (even though I’ve worked with them before) kinda like a mix and match experiment. Got some new Strathmore Visual Journals, and been working with a mix of pen(s), watercolor, colored pencils (old & newer), Pitt Pens & Tombow’s. I’m finding some I like on the mixed media paper &  some I don’t — which brings me to YES the colored pencils work better on the Bristol Smooth! On the day of ‘Pause’ from the EDM challenges I completed 3-4 pieces, plus I got a little more into my playtime creative soul. Moving forward to another week, with blessings by the billions!  PS…I’m also including this weeks Illustration Friday piece “Lonely”.

EDM#24 ‘a piece of fruit’ plus:)

EDM #25 (1) Empty Glass

EDM#25 (2) Plastic ‘glass’ with grape juice 🙂

Pear Tree with a Pleasant Profile

Illustration Friday ‘Lonely’

 

 

 

 

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Rainy Days of Winter

'Going Coastal'

This piece (old) kinda represents how the cloudy rainy days are affecting me, since the past several weeks have brought little in the ‘sun’ department, so I’ve been working in the studio on a fun new project on postcards. I make postcards out of my studio watercolor rejects. Constant playing to keep my self sane. Its just that there are times I find it difficult to get into anything serious when the days are just plain droopy. Today is no exception. So, I am following my own advice – just play, and play, and play. The more you play, the more you learn. Observation is a great way to keep your SEEing skill sharp. Today I walked to Starbucks, got my latte, did a bit of sketching in my journal and walked back in the rain. And now I continue my learning in the blogosphere. I assume that I’ll get better at it, and learn more about formatting & stuff as I go along.  Hopefully it won’t take me so long to post the next time.  Billions of blessings to all. Donna

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