Lettering in a Square

 

Yum!

 This is another daily practice from Make Art Where You Are on CreativeBug.  

Having finished my Stillman & Birn landscape sketchbook, I'm now using my  A4 Royal Talens art creation sketchbook.  I divide the page in 2 and put my class notes on the same page.  (In the landscape sketchbook I was putting notes on the page opposite the exercise.)

Here's what the whole page looks like:

Make Art Where You Are

 

Taking classes is how I stay inspired these days.  My local public library gives us free access to CreativeBug, which has enough classes to keep me busy for awhile!  CreativeBug has not only instructional classes on all things creative, but also 70 Daily Practice Series.  Each of these offers 30 short videos and prompts designed to get you creating each day for a month.

Right now, I'm taking a series called Make Art Where You Are, with Courtenay Cerruti.  I'm really enjoying it, and this sketchpage of markers and pencil crayons is from Day 6 Using the White of the Page.  I'm interested in trying a bit of a mixed media drawing approach, and it was fun using markers and pencil crayons together.  I'm pleased with the results too.

I'm almost at the end of my Stillman & Birn Alpha Series landscape sketchbook which I started in 2019 for Whims in Watercolor 2:  "Loose and Fearless" with Joanne Sharpe.  I'm feeling the urge to finish and consolidate sketchbooks again.....

On My Walk

 

These are a series of pages from Kate Sutton's Illustrated Life Journal class.  I love the square format of my journal and these little vignettes are a great way to quickly capture things I see on my walk. 

I'm finding out what I like and don't like about markers.   I like drawing things like the digger with a marker.  I like them less for large expanses of colour.

Once again, I had fun drawing the school, but not the sky.

I enjoy the limited colour palette Kate teaches and how it unifies the page.  Colour mixing is more difficult with markers than with paint. 

Sketching from Reference Material

 

This is another lesson from Kate Sutton's Domestica course.  Drawing with markers is fun and they dry instantly!

Today I'm Grateful For:

 

This is one of the daily pages Kate teaches in the new course I took recently.  Simple and fun, it helps us to think about what we are grateful for - always a good idea.  Gratitude boosts the spirit!

The colour scheme is so simple you don't need a lot of markers for this one!  She even suggests a highlighter will do. LOL

New Course, New Journal!

 

I took a course recently on Domestica called "Illustrated Life Journal:  A Daily Mindful Practice", taught by Kate Sutton.  The course attracted me for the following reasons:

• I love the idea of an illustrated life journal
• Mindfulness has been on my mind a lot lately (I'm really bad at it LOL)
• I have a lot of markers I rarely use and wanted some instruction and a structured way of using them for a longer project.  I could then decide whether I liked using them and how I might incorporate these as a change from watercolours 

Kate uses a square journal for the course and so I broke the seal on a 9 x 9 inch Leuchterm1917 journal I bought myself in November for my birthday.  I love the paper in these books - smooth and thick.

I'm going to do a series of blog posts about the course and my learnings. 

Bicycle or ... et al!!!

 

The Vancouver Urban Sketchers continue to meet online; this Meetup is called "Bicycle or ... et al!!!"  

I sketched this in markers from the comfort of my office.  I used a photo of my bike taken in 2009 after we went to a Canada Day celebration.  I still have the same bike, although I did put new tires on it a few years ago.

Learning from Each Other

 

I'm sharing a sketch today from one of my "workbooks", a sketchbook that doesn't see much Internet presence.

The Vancouver Urban Sketchers group has been running an online Meetup called "Learning from Each Other", and learning is my very favorite thing in the whole world so I jumped on board eagerly.  Here's what I've learned so far:

1. This book, "The Sketch in Color" by Robert S. Oliver, is a great resource
2. I'm going to play with using markers in my sketches a little more
3. I need to practice more before spring comes and I'm out sketching again.

I also learned from Roz Stendahl about the journal as workbook.

There are so many opportunities to learn from each other even during these difficult times of relative self isolation.  Some of the lessons might be hard ones and some are more fun.  Whatever the hobby or subject, the local library has free resources available both on line and off.

What have you learned today?  What have you helped someone else learn?  I'd love to learn about them!

Rest

a spread from Tiny Sparks, a book made in Art Sparks, a class with Joanne Sharpe

Strong

a spread from Tiny Sparks, a book made in Art Sparks, a class with Joanne Sharpe

Blessed

a spread from Tiny Sparks, a book made in Art Sparks, a class with Joanne Sharpe

Quarantinezine

Yes, quarantinezines are a thing, and of course, an Instagram hashtag.  A quarantinezine is a zine (homemade magazine) people are making during quarantine.  My zine is about the Silver Linings I am finding in the Covid cloud.

I made mine for my "card partner", Lois.  The Westcoast Calligraphy Society June program challenged us to make a card from a sheet of calligraphy practice, and assigned us a card partner to send our card to.  You can see my orange warm-up strokes in the two pictures above, and I practiced writing Lois' name before I folded the zine.  After it was folded, I added the silver linings in criss-cross capitals and script.  I included some drawings and couldn't resist the silver foil.

A zine is an 8 page book made from any size of paper, but often made from letter sized paper - simple copy/computer paper. 






























Here is some more information on zines along with some simple instructions on how to fold a zine.  Of course there are YouTube videos available.

More Men in Hats

ATC, Markers

It Didn't Start out Purple

Artist Trading Card, Markers

For these value studies, I thought I pulled out the same gray marker I used in my last post.  The barrel of the marker is gray.  It went on gray.

By the next day, it had dried purple.  And what's more, it isn't actually this grape colour, it is more magenta.  Usually my scanner is good with colours, but not this time.  These really are "magic pens", as advertised, only in a slightly different way!

Men in Hats Artist Trading Cards

Markers

Some men in hats jumped out of the journal and onto artist trading cards for our July swap.

After doing one in colour, I decided to play with values:

Good Samaritan 5

The Good Samaritan 4

ATC, Markers

The Good Samaritan 3

Artist Trading Card, Markers on Card

The Good Samaritan 2

Artist Trading Card, Markers