In my sketchbook: playing with borders

This is just one of those weeks where I am having difficulty getting any studio time. Sketching time, however, has been much easier to come by. 

(Look how nice and sweet our cat looks! Don't be deceived!! He loves to drool all over my sketches! Yet another reason why I am not much of a cat person.)

I really like to have parts of my designs go off the paper so that it feels like they extend beyond the work itself. Sometimes this can feel kind of awkward as I haven't always got the feel for a shape down before my pen hits the paper. I had the idea this week to draw a border about 1" around my paper so that I could have those initial movements outside the finished piece. 

Then I thought it would be interesting to do two pieces side by side on the same sheet.

After that I tried to see what would happen if I had a piece in the middle overlap both working areas. I already had multiple shapes down so it didn't work so well. 

The next time, I drew two shapes overlapping both work areas. The final design in the left one ended up being significantly stronger than the one on the right. 

Lastly, I kept things simple and had just one shape overlap. That gave me much more freedom to then work on each side individually because I want both sides to be interesting. 

Left side:

Right side:

This whole, "What happens if I try this?" process is what really fuels my creativity. It keeps me from getting stuck in a rut and keeps my curiosity alive!

To make sure that you don't miss any of my posts follow me here on Blog Lovin!

More ink experiments

A few weeks ago I was messing around with ink and watercolor paper and decided to try a few more things! For instance, what happens when you combine ink, copic marker, a felt tip marker and then spray it with water?

Or when you spray a leaf design you drew?

Or a surface design... 

Or an absract landscape of sorts!

Happy creative experiments to all of you!

In my studio: ink experiments

Last Friday night I was hanging out with my husband when an idea hit me. What would happen if I used a spray bottle on an ink drawing? 

The black ink I draw with would do absolutely nothing because it becomes permanent so quickly, but I had no clue what would happen with my new blue-green ink. 

Well, the result (I thought) was kind of amazing. The amount of bleed was definitely impacted by how close the water bottle was to the paper and the angle that I held the sketchbook. Having watercolor pencils nearby, I added some washes of blue to create depth. 

The next morning I taped down some paper that I thought was watercolor paper (but now am pretty sure isn't) and played around with washes, drips and spraying. The result was nice but different from what I achieved on the watercolor paper. 

This time around I made sure to use the same sketchbook paper from the first time. I had my camera set up to record and take close ups afterwards so you could get a better idea of what I was up to. 

Kinda cool, right? Now I should warn you that I have not made any type of multi-media video since like the fourth grade. Seriously. Fourth grade. I'm not sure which is more shocking, that I was able to figure out how to use an app to add text to my video or that my kids were quiet while I shot it! 

Stay tuned to see where these experiments lead, or if I ever attempt to record again! :-)

Memorial weekend making

My goal to have most of the living room painted was sort-of met. The brush that I was using for edging broke so I still have some touch-ups to do and an entire wall still needs a second coat. Thankfully said wall is behind a sofa, bookcase and artwork so no one could tell!

Friday night was spent watching Dr. Who on the porch by the fire. My kind of date!

The Grammy's took turn watching the kiddos so I had plenty of time to clean the house and prep food for Monday night. 

We make foil-pack dinners on the fire so most of my work is chopping all the veggies!

All week long it looked as though it would rain, but thankfully the storm did not roll in until after the evening was over. Each year I try to prepare only enough food for the night so I won't have to deal with leftovers and each year I fail. Guess what? This year was no exception!

We don't usually each meat but we had quite a bit left so I made a huge batch of beef curry which easily used up ALL the leftovers! 

And here's a little peek into what I was sketching on the porch!

What I'm Drawing: convalescence catch up

After three weeks of being too sick to sketch or really anything, I am having quite the surge of creative energy. Hope to use some of these sketches as inspiration or larger works.

Jury duty sketches

A few weeks ago I received a summons for jury duty. My to my dismay, having three children in diapers will not earn you an excused absence. Rats! I keep telling my husband that as long as I have to go to the courthouse, I hope it is a "big" case. Famous last words.

After a few hours of the general hurry up and wait that goes along with jury duty, we are told the name of the case and the charges. Sure enough, it is one of the biggest cases of the year for our city. It took a day and a half for the prosecutors and the defense attorneys to whittle our group from 28 to 12, and in the end, I did not make the cut.

I did try to take advantage off all the down time we had and ended up with these sketches!

Weekly update

 I would love to post some sort of "in my studio" weekly update, but this has been one of those weeks where I'm not sure if I really have much to post. My 11m son decided that his afternoon nap should be optional for a few days so that meant no painting for Mama!

Today he figured that a nap was a good idea so I was able to catch up on laundry and write this post.

Those of you who follow me on Instagram would have seen this post. I drew some flowers with Tulip paint on a transparency sheet with the hopes of making an acrylic skin by covering it with gel medium and then peeling it off. 

Unfortunately, I used the matte medium instead of the gloss so it was a little more opaque than I would have preferred. I've made some more with gloss, and they look much better. Hope to finish this piece up sometime this week and get back to my other starts. 

Sunday was nice because I was able to churn out this sketch while all three of my kiddos enjoyed their post-church naps (Sunday school wipes out my very social yet introverted children.).

And once they woke up, we all headed to a local single track park for little picnic.

We found this nice little spot to enjoy our PB & J's and carrots before the mosquitos started to drive us crazy. The little ones enjoyed saying, "hi" to all the cyclists that passed us by (none of whom probably every saw people picnicking there). :-)

What I'm Drawing: Flowers, bugs and more

In case you don't follow me on Instagram, here is what I've been sketching lately:

What I'm Drawing: Wednesday night sketch