Tag: sketch

Still resting but check out my art haul

You may recall I went to Jerry’s warehouse in Greensboro a few days ago. Well, I’m happy to share with you the goodies that I bought.

I purchased a couple of the portfolio folders, 5×7 inch and 14×17 inch. I needed somewhere to put my soft pastel paintings that are 12×16 inches. I do have an 11×14 inch portfolio (which is too small) but I can’t seem to find it. I need to clean up a couple corners in my art space to see if I can find it. I also will probably pick up a 9×12 inch one the next time I go because I have a lot of 8×12 inch paper.

I also have been following Sandi Hester lately and she has inspired me to go big with sketches. I already knew I didn’t like small sketchbooks given how many are sitting around with only a few pages used. So, I picked up a couple of 11×14 inch sketchbooks. I have an even larger one I bought from Blicks and I plan on sketching with paint in all three of them. I want at least 3 so I can move on to another ones while paint is drying in the first one.

The last item in this pic is Art Graf. I have the carbon black Art Graf block but decided to pick up the primary set because I’ve think it might be fun to use in my new sketchbooks.

Oil sticks

I can’t remember if I shared that I am starting to learn about oil painting but I knew that I would want some way to make chunky marks on the top later so I got the 24 count set of mini oil sticks from Sennelier. I have only peeled of the coating on a couple sticks but I love the feel of them already. I can’t wait to dive in to oils and really get my hands dirty playing with them.

I hope to get feeling better tomorrow so that I can actually make art again. Until then, hope you have a great day!

Sketching Consistently

In addition to painting in a semi-abstract way, I also enjoy drawing. I think my drawing skills have grown a lot in the last couple years, but I still have so much room for improvement. So, to that end, I plan on trying to do 4 sketches a week in my sketchbook.

Last Sunday, while recuperating from a biopsy of my spine (yes – it was a painful as it sounds), I spent hours reading Alison Fennell aka The Pottering Artist’s blog: https://eastwitching.com/

I remember one of the posts talked about having a regular sketching habit and Alison described printing out 7 photos at a time and attaching them to the left side of her sketchbook so she could look at them while sketching on the right side. I thought that sounded like an awesome idea, so that’s what I’m planning on doing.

I dug through my photos from 2014 and picked four that I thought were interesting. I think I will sketch with charcoal pencils, though may change my mind and use graphite. I’m not certain about that yet.

Do you have a regular sketching habit? If so, how did you start? How do you keep yourself on task even when “life” gets in the way?