Sketching Tools

Sketch kit

The Venezia Fabriano sketchbook is worn, and nearly full, after eight months. (This is one of the first sketches in it.) I usually sketch with a Lamy Joy fountain pen (EF nib), filled with De Atrametis document ink, then add color with a waterbrush.

I now use the second palette from the top of the stack--a Sennelier sampler with the plastic insert removed, then lined with empty half pans filled with various tube watercolors. There should also be a  small spray bottle (to pre-wet the paint) and a paper towel (to squeeze the waterbrush into between colors) in this drawing.

Interested beginners may want to start as I did*, with a 5x8 Strathmore Visual Journal for Mixed Media, a Micron felt tip pen (fineliner), and a Winsor & Newton Cotman Watercolor Sketchers Pocket Box (includes a tiny travel brush).  Get a small spray bottle to wet the watercolor a few minutes before starting. If you plan to sketch away from home, you will find a waterbrush, along with a paper towel, useful--eliminating the need to have a cup of water to rinse your brush between colors. (Hobby Lobby has sketchbooks on sale every other week, and you can use one of their coupons on the palette.)
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*The books that got me started were Gina Rossi Armfield's No Excuses Art Journaling and Cathy Johnson's Artist's Journal Workshop, followed by a few of Danny Gregory's. (Can be found in local library.) Sketchbook Skool kept me going. More recently, Craftsy has enabled me to focus on areas of interest and refine skills.

Rabbits on Easter Day

The rabbits are smaller than this in proportion to the hill, but was focused on their proportion to people here.  A little girl was hunting eggs; two young men were flying kites; adults were taking pictures of themselves with the rabbits.
 (From the northwest.)

First Watch

Coffee

Cream

These were done on different days. Natural light was coming from the right in the top drawing, from the left in the lower one. (Artificial light overhead.) You can see a few strokes of the water-soluble Caran d'Ache crayons, added later to intensify color, on the lower one. They are fun to play with.

Easter song

Hallelujah Chorus

Royal Choral Society

God has moved, broken the boundary of death.

I Corinthians 15

Cross, Hilliard United Methodist church

"In the cross of Christ I glory, towering o'er the wrecks of time...."  

                                    (From the hymn by John Bowring)

Good Friday: the edge of time and eternity

Today Malcolm Guite shares his poems, the Stations of the Cross, which are found in his book Sounding the Seasons.

Golf Club

Elevation view.

Amigos, again

Amigos offers many opportunities to work on contour, color, texture, shadow, perspective, and architectural detail. The food is good, and the staff friendly and helpful. Someday we will visit when the mariachi band plays.

Panini Opa

Overhead lights, village salad

Lemon potato, fry, pita, banana pepper

I am fascinated by the lights here, bulbs mounted in upside-down egg baskets. Tasty Greek-Italian street food. I drew a montage of the last morsels on a few plates at our table. A few minutes later, I noticed they resembled a face, maybe of a snowman.

View from parking lot, Hard Road library

Someone had been cutting a tree down. This library is worth a visit to see the life-size storybook art in the children's reading room. It also has a cozy fireplace and a convenient snack area.

Heritage Cooperative building, March thumbnail

From the east.

Grain Branch Seasonal Announcement:  [February 1, 2016] The last date to deliver grain into these facilities this winter will be Friday, February 26th and they will reopen on Monday, June 27th in time for wheat harvest. They will remain open for fall harvest through January of 2017. At that time they will again be closed until late June when they will again reopen for wheat harvest and fall harvest.

Blooms

Bouquet, First Apostolic Church lobby.  Sign out front: " Life is fragile; handle with prayer." (Background shadow is full of watercolor "blooms," which are usually avoided, if possible. I found them interesting here, because they echoed the silk ones.)

Anna's Greek Cuisine

Celebration.

Construction, Bridge Park

This scene interests me because the buildings rise, and the piles of dirt move, every day. (It also shows areas for practice and improvement in texture and perspective.) Looking north.

Ottoman, Red Robin lobby

The vinyl stripes sewn  around this ottoman are the colors of the layers of a hamburger--bun, beef, mustard, ketchup, lettuce, bun.

Hares in February snow

The hares in this February sketch look heavy, thick--either with extra layers of clothing for cold weather, or with weight gained over the holidays. (From north west)

March Hares

In March, they welcome spring, dancing. (From south east)

Fujimura on the value of limitations, boundaries....

Lent: "It's All in the Waiting" by Makoto Fujimura from Pilgrim Year on Vimeo.

Makoto Fujimura is an artist, a writer, and the Director of Fuller Seminary's Brehm Center.

Lapin's Camino pilgrimage sketchbook

(camino de santiago from picnic on Vimeo.)

Lapin is a well-known French illustrator, artist, and urban sketcher who lives in Barcelona. His memoir of walking the Camino is an interesting record for the Lenten season.

Lunch at Amigos

Bloom, year two

Bouquet

Vase with a hole through it
Amigos

Woe to you who strive with your Maker, earthen vessels with the Potter! 

Does the clay say to the One who fashions it, "What are You making?" or, 

"Your work has no handles"? Isaiah 45:9 NRSV* .

*Or, "Your work has a hole through the middle!"