New Chopsticks

A grid of line, color, and texture is a quick and easy way to organize impressions when you're in a hurry or don't want to reduce a drawing to one focal point. It's a good exercise for beginners who think they can't draw, because anyone who can write their name can fill in a simple grid of close-ups.

I seldom use a grid, but on this day remembered the previous one I'd sketched at New Chopsticks. It's always fun to return to places and repeat drawings, and see how your vision has changed over time, what catches your eye, how you see differently.

Textures

These are textures and materials viewed from the Kroger parking lot: awning, brick, bicycle rack, bushes, shingles, stone (with downspout), faux gable window.
When I was young, we shopped at a Kroger built on the edge of a parking lot decked with sculptures of the Seven Wonders of the World. Those were the days.

Further reading about Ivan Pusecker, Walk of Wonders artist:
Pusecker family featured at Church at Mill Run

Cabin fever

Ornament doodles

In which I riff on Koosje Koene's ornament patterns. Also inspired by December welcomes being found across the bullet journal community this week.

Playing with red shades of gouache, Uniball Vision Elite fine liner, and pastel pencils. If I had a larger stock of pastels, I may have achieved better color harmony, with the holly. This looks a little messy, but I like it anyway. You can do what you want in your sketchbook!

On the road

Trip notes: water tower over scattered houses and late autumn fields, bumpersticker, couch fabric pattern, seen in a waiting room.

It was hard to reserve the whites, working small, in a moving vehicle. I used a broad white Uniball Signo gel pen on the houses, tower, and fabric pattern.

For anyone who thinks you can't draw, but would like to learn: start by sketching simple patterns, from observation of the world around you. Then move to increasingly complex ones. You will simultaneously learn to see better and improve eye-hand coordination.

Grid: textures and patterns

View from my chair at lunch, New Chopsticks. Could use as ideas for carving linocuts.