Playing in my Sketchbook

Posted on January 22, 2016 by ruthlane under sketch book, Sketching

I always take my sketchbook with me when I travel and I recently took a trip to the east coast. These are a few of the pages that I worked on during my travels.

The top two were rusted already and I added the blue. The other two colorful ones had a layer of paint and soy wax and I added a bit more color to them, filling in the areas that were white from the soy wax. And the last one is a sketch I did at my sister’s house. This is a seed pod from a Sweetgum tree. We don’t have them in Montana so I picked up one on my walk and sketched it.

These two I did at home. I like the one on the right but I’m not so sure about the one with leaves. And thanks Teri for your suggestion of adding some black pen. Hope you all have a good weekend.

Mexican Inspiration in my Sketchbook

Posted on May 1, 2015 by ruthlane under sketch book

I did take my art supplies and sketchbook with me to Mexico. Since we did a lot of relaxing on the beach, I had time to add some inspiration from my trip.

This zentangle page was done on the airplane ride down.

The tropical flowers were abundant around our condo.

This isn’t necessarily a flower but I saw a lot of these colors.

These little mushroom like structures were all over the beaches. We sat under one of these nearly every day.

I had screen printed this page quite a while ago but I added the deeper green and the “coconuts” one day on the beach. I saw lots of palm trees as well.

I played around adding black and white ink to this already painted page.

And since I’ve been back, I have seen a lot of these little Glacier Lilies. So I decided to add this one to my pages of Montana wildflowers.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Thanks for stopping by.

Playing in my Sketchbook

Posted on March 20, 2015 by ruthlane under sketch book

I had a little time this week to play in my sketchbook and try out my new high flow acrylic paints. I also watched a few Youtube videos about making zentangle patterns here.

I tried the high flow acrylics in my new pen and got the blue/violet lines. And then I added red and yellow. These are so much more vivid than adding water to the regular acrylics.

This one is actually the back of a page I painted but I really like it. It reminds me of frost on a window. The patterns are made from the paper being wet to start and lying on plastic.

Here’s the first zentangle pattern. It looks complex but was fairly simple to draw except for all those circles.

And here’s another one. You start with two parallel rows of circles and then connect them from there. You should check out the Youtube link above if you want to learn how these complex patterns are drawn. They really aren’t that hard to draw once you know the tricks.

And this last one is my attempt to be a bit more abstract. So when I do that I always seem to end up back to drawing circles. But I like it. What have you been up to this week? I hope you have a good weekend and thanks for stopping by.

Two More Sketchbook Pages

Posted on December 5, 2014 by ruthlane under sketch book

I have been working in my sketchbook lately (see post on the Felting and Fiber Studio for more photos). These are two pages that I worked on yesterday.

I have showed you this page before, it has a background of gesso and green paint, then it was stamped with the leaf shapes. I drew the roses with a pencil, then redrew in black pen. I then used Tombow pens to color and shade the roses. I am planning on adding stems to the roses and leaves so that all the stamped leaves will be background. I will post another photo when it’s finished.

This one is a painted green background with the purple blue color mono printed off of the remaining color left when we were screen printing. I then drew the echinacea with pencil and redrew with black pen. The next step was to paint the flowers in white so that then I could add the color of the flowers without it being overwhelmed by the background. I actually kind of like it this way but I’ll still probably add the color. The only problem is that I used watercolor pencil for the white (the only paint I had at the time) so I will need to go over it either with gesso or white acrylic paint. Or I could just leave it and call it “Ghost Flowers”. What do you think?

Collages and Painting

Posted on October 3, 2014 by ruthlane under sketch book

I have been gradually adding more to my sketchbook pages. Some of them I worked into with more paint, ink pens and colored pencils and others I added more paper elements.

The photo on the left shows the original stamped version. Then, on the right I added some dark elements with white highlights and some red highlights.

Again, the photo on the left was the original after stamping. Here it is after I added Inktense pencils, sprayed with water and then added darker elements with ink markers. Not sure if this one is finished yet. I thought it might benefit from a bit of black pen.

I’m not sure if I showed this one before. The green is screen printed with inks. I colored in the background and outlined with orange marker. The scanner has trouble picking up the subtleties of the screen printing process.

This is a star that I had stenciled on to another color of paper. I cut it out and glued it in place. I’m sure I could do more with this but I kind of like the simplicity.

This last one is circles printed on to the paper with thickened dye and then rinsed out. The darker ones on top were cut from another page that didn’t get rinsed. This might benefit from some orange highlights.

I hope you have a great weekend and thanks for stopping by!

Ruth Lane Art

Experimenting with Arts Endless Possibilities

Tag Archives: sketchbook

Playing in my Sketchbook

Mexican Inspiration in my Sketchbook

Playing in my Sketchbook

Two More Sketchbook Pages

Collages and Painting