Some Sketches

I've made three sketchbooks since this summer. I work in all of them, but this is the first book I made and the one I'll be posting sketches from today.

My fav supplies to use are watercolors, watercolor pencils, microns and Bristol paper. I use the same supplies and paint and draw the same types of things all the time. I wanted to practice watercolors, pastels, markers, acrylic, etc as well. I used to love all of those things but I've gotten in a rut drawing/painting the same types of things with the same materials. I mentioned before filling this book with pastel, canvas, bristol, sketch, and tinted papers. It seemed like a good idea to use all the various papers and it did get me excited to draw again and working with different materials.

I'm not a professional artist. This is just a super fun hobby for me. Some of the drawings from when I started the book just flat out suck. Even some of the later drawings make me want to take another life drawing class (the last one was some 20 years ago). That's okay. I haven't practiced in a long while. I look forward to becoming better as I go.

Some figures using using the site Posemaniacs. A great place for figure references. These were my least favorite sketches.

Headless pixie Vidia and toothless. Also not great but good drawing practice. I liked being able to draw the toys from different angles.

More pixie toys. Poor wingless fairies.

I picked a bundle of lavender from a lavender farm this past May. Arranged a small still life with it to paint. Got bored halfway through and never finished it. I did use the same paint to paint these lavender people on the other side of the paper. That was more fun.

Some sketches of my son. 7 year olds can't sit still so this was a challenge. They're okay. And then some I sketched of my daughter. That was close to impossible to get her to stay in one place long enough. Good practice, I think, on doing a drawing quickly. Again, not great finished product, but had fun anyway.

That's about a third of the sketches in this book so far. The ugly beginnings. I will post more this evening when I have more time.

Lookie Lookie Sketchbook One

I love art. I've created art as far back as I can remember. It's my happy place, quiet me time place, this is what makes me special place. I've mostly neglected this place the past two years with the last addition to our family. Babies need lots of attention after all. Babies/toddlers who don't sleep need much more. Ha!Oh, how my artist eye has suffered. I'm one of those creative people who has to practice practice practice or I lose skills. Recently, I claimed a little corner of our guest room for my art space. My little art nook. I dusted off some tucked away art supplies and added some new to my collection. Colorful art supplies give me warm fuzzies. My first attempts to work with them did not. Garbage! Yuck! Like starting over as a newbie artist. And that's okay. If you're a newbie artist who aspires to create amazing, awesome stuff you have to be willing to make some NOT so amazing, awesome stuff in the beginning. A couple of months ago, I made myself a sketchbook. My goal was to draw every day. I collected a variety of art paper I had (sketch, pastel, watercolor, canvas, etc.), and bound it between two pieces of board (can't remember what the stuffs called). Love it. Having a book made special just for me makes me want to draw all of the time. Here is the cover. That's a self portrait of me. I have some sort of mental block about what I look like, I guess, as I never can really tell if my self portraits look like me or not. I'm going to post sketches from this book tomorrow. I want to keep up with future sketches as they happen. Maybe I'll see some progress over time?