Sketchbooks
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Refilling the Well
Taking the time yesterday to just relax and have a nice date night was much needed. I’ve been pushing myself to post here every day, and while I want to post as often as possible, there is a balance in creating and then resting to refill the well of inspiration. And coming back into the practice, I sunk into a nice intuitive painting: free from any plans or expectations. Leaf shapes are still my current artistic comfort-food of choice.
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Embracing Sketchbook Messiness
If I want to finish my current sketchbook before the end of spring, I calculated (a couple of days ago) that I need to finish an average of 1.5 pages a day. Is doing that calculation a sign that my need to control chaos is creeping into my art practice again?
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Marker practice and some quick digital drawing drills
Followed through and finished adding marker to yesterday’s line art. I wasn’t sure how well the Ohuhu markers would blend, but I’ve been pleasantly suprised by how nice they work. They bleed all the way through the mixed media paper, though, which is a shame. Similar to Copics, I think they’re better suited to Bristol, marker paper, or even printer paper in a pinch. Mixed media paper is usually closer to a toothy watercolor type paper and absorbs more marker than necessary. At least, that’s what I’ve observed.
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Line Art: Practicing Faces
Tonight’s drawing is a quick sketch that I inked in Copic multiliner (mostly 0.1, with 0.5 for the outer edges). I want to practice using the Ohuhu skin tone marker set. The upper half of the page was color blending practice from December, which I shared in my skin tone practice post. I want to make sure the ink is completely dry before coloring, so the markers will have to wait til tomorrow.
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Butterfly Wings and Curtsies
I woke up feeling like I had no idea what I wanted to sketch today, so I decided to run with an idea from earlier this week of studying butterfly wing anatomy a little more closely. Then, because I wanted to have an ink drawing to test out my Ohuhu markers on, I sketched a fairy princess character. I’m going to behave and let the ink properly dry overnight before trying to apply any color to it this time.
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Living room sketch
I took time this morning after drinking coffee to sketch the living room. It was a fun exercise, sticking with pen only (and later brush markers for shadows) and having to commit to the lines I put down. The perspective and proportions got way off for the coffee table and the heating vent just beyond the doorway. But I like how it turned out, even if it’s a bit skewed.
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Late Night Sketching
Tonight’s sketchbook page: the objects on the coffee table in front of me. Hey, sometimes you just gotta work with what you have. I didn’t sit down to draw until 9:30pm-ish, so considering it took me about 45 minutes of drawing time, I feel pretty proud that I completed a page. I was not feeling good after dinner and had convinced myself that art and blogging were not in the cards tonight. But after laying down for a couple hours and drinking room temp sparkling water, I’m happy to say I still reached for my sketchbook.
