Dandelions

Ildikó Kerasay did a lesson for Sketchbook Revival called. "Dandelion, herb or weed." She gave a lot of information on the properties of the HERB, dandelion. We were able to sketch the parts of the dandelion either from the references she was using or find our own. It took me a while to find some dandelions and sketch their parts. I was surprised that they were actually difficult to remove from the ground...small but mighty.

Seashells

 I still haven't done too many of the art lessons for Sketchbook Revival this year, but I have watched quite a few of the lessons. I follow Koosje Koene on Facebook and Instagram so I definitely had to do something to go with her lesson. Basically you pick an item and draw it repeatedly from different views. She uses black for shadows to make them more dramatic. I decided to use a shell for my subject and I'm really happy with the way the page came out.

Wobbly House

 Right now Sketchbook Revival is taking place on line. I've done it several times, and each day for a week there are three video lessons that can be done. I decided that I would watch the videos if they seemed like they would interest me or were different. Irene Ruby's workshop was "Wobbly Fantasy Houses" and was fun to do...a change from what I normally do, especially since it isn't from life. Maybe I'll get to watch a few more today or over the weekend. I'm really behind watching them...never mind actually doing the lesson. lol The lessons are only available for a limited time. 

Sketchbook Revival Part IV

 

I'm pretty much done with the lessons I wanted to do in Sketchbook Revival. Emma Freeman had a great lesson using fabric and assorted items to make a "Stitched Wabi Sabi Fabric Scroll." I searched around and found a piece of fabric with a sort of quilted design. Then I added some stitching, some seashells, a piece of birch bark, and some beach glass. I will have to replace the long, thin shell. It fell out and I can't find it. I did the fabric strip shorter than Emma suggested because I wanted to attach it to a page in my Sketchbook Revival sketchbook. 

Roisin Cure did a lesson on "Beach Bodies." I took a workshop with her at the Urban Sketchers Symposium in Porto, Portugal a while ago. She is really good. I watched her lesson but really didn't want to follow her exact photo for the lesson so I passed on doing it. However we had a godsend of a GORGEOUS, 85 degree day recently and I went to the beach. There were so many people there that it looked like summer. I did a sketch similar to her idea, although I didn't add color. It wasn't done in my Sketchbook Revival sketchbook. Instead I used a small sketchbook that I had in my beach bag.

Karen Abend who started Sketchbook Revival hosted the last lesson that I planned to do which was a "Mini Doodle Diary." She had us do mini sketches to go along with 8 prompts she gave. She worked from her imagination to do her sketches, but I worked mostly from life. Several of the sketches I did while sitting in my car in a garden center parking lot. It was drizzling lightly outside at the time. That's where I did the chicken (which was a metal garden sculpture that was about 5 feet tall), the daffodil, the pink tree, and the scene looking out my car window. 

Sketchbook Revival - Part III

 I have completed quite a few of the lessons from Sketchbook Revival...more than I have done in the past. Some of them didn't seem like something I would want to try but I watched the videos and made an attempt. Here are the recent ones.

Angela Fehr's lesson was on doing spontaneous watercolors. It was fun watching the paints mingle, but it wasn't something that excited me.

Joy Ting Charde had us pick a medium to do a colorful landscape. We did a sketch similar to one of Diebenkorn's paintings. I used mostly watercolors. 

The we worked from a reference photo using his colors instead of the colors in the reference. This was another lesson I thought I wouldn't like but I was surprised that it was fun. I went a lot brighter with the colors than I usually work and in addition to watercolors I added some liquid acrylic inks. I was pleased with how this turned out.

Sketchbook Revival - Part II

 I am still working slowly on some of the lessons from this year's Sketchbook Revival. 
Here are a few more pages.

Joanna Sharpe's lesson was called "A Little Every Day, Watercolor Play." She had us use watercolor washes leaving an area to do some lettering. Her lettering is whimsical and uses exaggerated features and embellishments to the painted page. I did one section similar to her piece and using the same phrase she did.

Then I did a second one with a phrase of my own.

Alison Wells had us create a "Mixed Media Gratitude Art Journal Page" where we collaged and stamped and used negative painting. 

Terri Burt's lesson was "Sunshine on a Cloudy Day" and involved sketching quirky houses (mine doesn't look too quirky) in permanent ink, adding color and inking again with water-soluble ink that can be wet to create shadows and shading. It is something I've done before but I enjoyed it.

Tamara Laporte's colorful lesson was to create an "Expressive Portrait of a Fox." We used colorful watercolors and inks to help show the texture in the fox's face and body.

I still have a number of lessons to go.

Sketchbook Revival

 I am once again participating in Sketchbook Revival, developed by Karen Abend. It runs from March 20 - April 1, with 2 new sessions released each day. There are 25+ workshop sessions and each is led by a different artist using everything from drawing and painting, to collage and mixed media, to sketching and printing. The lessons help us loosen up, develop our imaginations, practice our observation skills, express our emotions, etc, while also learning about color.

Before the workshops began there was a special lesson about creating our own sketchbooks with removable signatures. I've made a few signatures but I haven't created my cover to bind them. I won't do that until I decide how many of the lessons I actually complete. The sessions are available until April 20. Today is already March 31 and I have barely made a dent in the sessions.

The first session led by Jeanne Oliver is called "Creating in the In-Between." Essentially you are using any spare time in your day to do a gesture sketch quickly in pencil and go back to finish it in color.

 
Mike Lowry's session was on "Doodle Blobs."

Koosje Koene's session was "From Blob to Colorful Drawing." Color was put down with watercolors and shaded with colored pencil.

Helen Wells had us "Exploring Abstract Shapes and Color."

Julie Fei-Fan Falzer had us use gelli plate prints in tones of one color to make a
"Custom Color Collage Grid."

Like I said, I am quite a bit behind. I've watched a few more sessions but I haven't done my piece for the lesson. It is hard to fit these in with everything else that I'm busy doing. But I will do my best to at least do a few more. I will do another post when I have a few more done.

Three Amigos

 This is actually one of the lessons from Sketchbook Revival given by Kris Keys called "Wildflower Floral Painting Workshop." She worked loosely on the yellow flower with watercolor pencil followed by liquid ink/watercolor. The second flower was done by wetting the paper first and then adding the watercolor. More paint was added when the area was dry. The third flower on the bottom was supposed to be done within a wet area but the color was dropped liquid from an eyedropper instead of using a brush. I had some bottles of Dr Ph Martin's liquid watercolors, but hadn't used them in eons and they were all dried out. So mine was done wet into wet with a brush. The bottles were tossed.

Forsythia in Bloom & Watercolor Warmup Patterns

 I have been on high alert watching for forsythia in bloom. I knew the forecast was for rain for a few days this week so I headed out on a dry day to an area where there is usually forsythia in bloom.

I did another lesson from Sketchbook Revival. This one was hosted by Faith Evans-Sills called Watercolor Warmups Gathering Color and Pattern inspiration. She had us find an advertisement or photo and work with patterns of colors found in what we selected. I used a Degas painting of dancers for my inspiration.

Across the Water & Zentangle

 While I was up at Cedar Beach I changed locations within the park and went down by the pier. I sat in my mobile studio looking at this scene while I had lunch.  I really wanted to do this but it looked like too much playing around to get the shrubbery on the cliff to look right. I took a chance and pulled out just my regular sketching pencil and I liked the result. I don't know if those big buildings are private homes, but considering I was in a rather wealthy area it is possible. The one on the left looks like it should be a hotel.

This morning I did another Sketchbook Revival session. This was with Melinda Barlow on the Art of Zentangle. I've tangled before but never with such floral designs. This was fun and is about 5 inches square.

Mount Sinai Waterview and Sketchbook School Street

I drove up to Cedar Beach in Mount Sinai on Saturday. Mount Sinai is on the north side of Long Island where there are bluffs along Long Island Sound. The landscape is a bit different than the south shore...still a lot of water but the land down here is pretty flat. There was a mound of sand by the water and beyond that was a sand bar and across the inlet some rather large, expensive houses.

I have been working on my "Collage the Street" from Karen Stamper's Sketchbook Revival lesson a little bit at a time. I think it is finally done.

 

Waterfront & 1-2-3 Cats

 I sat across from the ferries to Fire Island down by Brown's River Road and sketched.

I did another Sketchbook Revival lesson, this one with Este' Mac Leod. She had us doing 1-2-3 Let's Draw Cats. They must be the most popular animal...at least in these lessons. Each cat was drawn incorporating a number from 1-9 in the design. #3 and #8 had to be on their side. It was fun to try to figure out how to get the number in the design for the cat's face. Can you find the number in each face?

Southold Charm & Collage

 I headed out on the north fork this weekend and added some sketches to my concertina sketchbook. This sketch filled the last segment on the front. There are some really nice houses with beautiful colors like this one in Southold.

I decided I'd never get to all the projects in Sketchbook Revival. My plan is to watch the videos and pick the ones that interest me. This lesson was by Tiffany Sharpe called "Watercolor Collage Fodder." I used a bit of stamped paper, a gelli print, tissue paper and watercolors.

Dunes at Smith Point & Sketchbook Revival Flowers

I am always drawn to the beach and love sketching the dunes. This was done looking toward the Park Ranger Station at Smith Point Beach. 

Joy Ting had us do mixed media flower studies for Sketchbook Revival. She suggested that if we are working with a floral collection it may help to focus on just part of the collection, so I cropped her photo reference and just worked on about 1/4 of the photo. She also had us do smaller sketches before doing a larger one to work out the placement and composition. I used pencil, watercolors, water-soluble inks, white ink, and oil pastels.

Sewing Supplies and Sketchbook Revival

The Patchogue Sketch Club met at the library this week for the first time in a long time. Our theme was Sewing Stuff & Haberdashery. I brought along all sorts of sewing supplies. One of the members brought along a vintage Singer sewing machine. It was too far down the table for me to sketch it.

The lesson I worked on yesterday for Sketchbook Revival was Miriam Schulman's art affirmations. The lesson involved harmony using only two colors of watercolors. I used quinacridone gold and paynes grey.

 

Bridge View & Sketchbook Revival

I was at a park on the Great South Bay in Islip the other day and had this view of the bridge going to Robert Moses State Park. 

I sketched a boulder for the Creative Spark scavenger hunt.

Carla Sonheim did a lesson for Sketchbook Revival on Stylized Zoom Portraits. We used credit cards to do background tones for the boxes and then drew the people in ink. Each box harmonizes with the other boxes in the group because each color had to be used in at least one place in each box. Although we weren't going for actual realistic portraits mine do resemble each person a bit.

Beach Fence & Sketchbook Revival Begins

I needed to do some sketching for the creativespark.art scavenger hunt that I am posting. One of the items was a fence. I found this one down at a small beach park in Islip.

I sketched a bench for "outdoor seating" while I was there and a few birds for "something with feathers."

I am also taking part in Karen Abend's Sketchbook Revival. It is the 5th year she has organized this project and it goes on for 2 weeks with 2 lessons by different instructors each day. I don't always do each lesson and definitely don't keep up and do them on the days they are posted.

The first lesson was by Courtney Cerruti who had us start with one color of watercolor and then mix it with as many colors as we could. Once the colors were dry we were challenged to form something with each color. I didn't do the other two parts of her lesson - color wheels and blind contours with watercolor added.

The second lesson was with Carla Sondheim doing Stylized Zoom Portraits using mixed media.

 

Virtual Sketch from Venice

It was a rainy day so I stayed inside and joined #VirtalSketch to do some sketching along the canals in Venice. Last year at this time I was actually there for the entire month of April. I guess this will have to do. I ended up at Squero San Trovaso, the gondola boatyard along the Rio San Troveso. This was done with a brush pen and watercolors.

I also took part in Sketchbook Revival this month. One of the lessons involved creating Layered Pages. Some people used their pages inside books, but I decided I would use them for covers for a sketchbook (which I will have to work on). Thanks to Kellee Wyneee Conrad for the lessons! Here are the outside and inside covers I made using gesso, acrylic paint, stencils, and collage.

Sketchbook Revival Lessons

There are all kinds of art projects, lessons, and workshops taking place online while we are all doing our social distancing at home. I've signed up for Sketchbook Revival with Karen Abend. She has sponsored free lessons before and have enjoyed some of them. For each revival she invites a group of artist to each do a lesson. I watched the first session which was in several parts but never got any of the activities done for that one. I may go back to it yet.

I am being choosy about which lessons I do. Carla Sondheim did a fun lesson the other day doing sketches from blobs of paint. You do some random blobs of paint with a knife and a scraper and then look at the shape turning it into something...sometimes you have to turn the blob in a different direction to "see" something. It was fun to do. Here are my blobs.

Yesterday Tamara Laporte did a lesson on creating "quirky birds." I had a lot of fun with this and will probably try another one. I think they would make fun prints for cards. This combined watercolors, posca pens, white gel pen, and acrylic paints.