Category Archives: sketch book

A Couple of Sketches

Posted on by under sketch book, Sketching

Since my last post, I have been really busy. We had our annual art retreat and then I was off to Washington state for my Art and Design class. Then back to Montana and trying to catch up with work and get all my art stuff back into the right places. I have a big project to work on for my class and I started some sampling for that but you’ll have to wait to see it until it’s finished. But I do have a couple of sketches that I completed.

This is one of the plants that I saw while we were in Lake Tahoe. It is called Woodland Pine Drops. According to the US Forest Service, it is a root parasite that grows near pine trees. They produce minimal chlorophyll and are not green in color and do not conduct photosynthesis. The ones I saw were in the “pod” stage where the flowering is complete and the plants become woody and hard. They look like little pumpkins on a stem.

And here is a sketch of rose hips. I did some cross hatching on this one to hopefully give it some depth. I think I need to add a little more yellow green into the background though.

Have a great rest of your weekend!

More Sketches

Posted on by under sketch book, Sketching

We went on a trip this past week to Oregon for the graduation of Dennis’s granddaughter. Loads of driving since Dennis couldn’t drive yet due to the broken shoulder. But I did it and even had some time for a few sketches while we were there. We stayed in a cabin on a cattle ranch so these are a few scenes from the cabin.

We had a wood stove and it was chilly so we even started a fire in the stove one night.

This was the lamp above the kitchen table. I used sepia markers for this one and worked on hatching and cross hatching techniques.

And there was a taxidermy deer for decoration. This one is a pencil sketch and turned out better than I thought it would.

Before we left, I took Dennis to church. This is Trinity Lutheran Church in Kalispell, Montana. While he attended church, I sketched and then added watercolor. I didn’t really have enough time to get it completely finished but it came out OK.

Now off to work on finishing up my nuno felted landscape series. I have been blogging about those over on The Felting and Fiber Studio if you haven’t seen them.

Maple Leaf Sketch

Posted on by under sketch book, Sketching

Here’s another sketch that I worked on this week. I painted the leaf with watercolor and then added colored pencil on top.

The colors are a bit off in this photo, a little more green to the leaf. I still think I need to improve the blending of colored pencils to get the right effect. I think the next one like this I will try on smoother paper to see if that makes a difference.

Have a great weekend!

Daily Sketches

Posted on by under sketch book

I have continued working in my sketchbook on a nearly daily basis. I have been averaging at least 5 days a week and I’ve been trying different techniques. I have also been sketching the same plants at different stages in spring growth. That has been fun. Here are a few:

 

The very colorful pine cone was inspired by Teri’s post here. The stool at the ortho office was because hubby broke his right arm. Sigh… Now I am care giving and doing double duty of chores. But he didn’t need surgery and it’s beginning to heal so I just keep going and try to be positive.

Hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Covering Sketch/Note Book Covers

Posted on by under sketch book

I told you a couple of weeks ago about the Sketchbook Revival. One of the free tutorials was about covering sketch books or note books or studio journals or whatever you want to call them. I am not sure why I never thought of this idea. The instructor suggested using commercial fabric and apply it to the cover with fusible web. Duh…

I have tons of fabric that already has surface design waiting around to be used for something. And this is so simple! Yay. This is a cyano-type fabric that I made ages ago with one of my sketches from my first circle book. I thought it was appropriate for covering my second circle book. I just wrapped the edges around and fused a piece of solid blue paper on the inside cover to hide the edges of the fabric. I am going to use this technique to cover a bunch more of my books.

This second book is full of collages and prints. I used a screen printed piece of paper from a session of deconstructed screen printing. I had been saving this piece for a while but this was perfect. I used fusible web and an iron, ironed it down and then used a craft knife to cut the extra paper off.

And just because I thought you all might like to see this. I went to a Kentucky Derby party last weekend. I made this hat from a variety of stuff lying around my studio. It only took about 30 minutes to throw it together and I got lots of complements. So all those UFO’s came in handy 😉