Adding elements really does round out a sketchbook page. One of my favorite elements to add are maps!
There is a public walkway next to a golf course that I like to walk at when the weather is cool enough. They have a manmade pond that attracts birds and other wildlife. Since the temperature dropped down to 93F/33C (finally!) I took a walk. The one-mile round trip walk from the parking lot to the end of the pond is a perfect map to draw for the sketchbook, and for this sketchbook design element.
Color Blocks are another one of the Sketchbook Design elements we are working with in Sketching Now Sketchbook Design class. Here I’ve used a simple color block to balance and add interest to this minimal page of the stickers I’d placed in my book.
I’m working my way through the seven elements. So far I’ve done one for text, white space, color blocks, and maps. Three more to go!
Sketching your food everyday is like sketching boot camp. It was also a great way to get back into the daily sketching habit. (I did very little sketching during 2020.) My aim was to work fast, get my color mixes as accurate as I could, and, of course, record the moment. Most of these I sketched after I ate, from photographs, since I haven’t yet mastered the self-restraint not to dive into the food when I’m hungry!
I find that sketchbook design elements really do help these pages come together. The frames, the text, the date heading. I shall be working with those elements more for the next food sketchbook.
This sketchbook is a Stillman and Birn Alpha softcover, 3.5″ x 5.5″. I’m probably ready to move to a larger size, but I have this size already for the next one.
I do confess that these sketches, and the preponderance of the Buff Titanium that is my flatware, gives me the urge to buy more colorful plates!
Watercolor Class, Buildings Class, and a few other sketches are in this little 3.5 x 5.5 inch Stillman & Birn Beta, softcover sketchbook. What a journey it has been! I learned so much!
This is the first sketchbook I finished, the second sketchbook I started. I had accidentally labeled it volume 1, then found the earlier sketchbook, so I changed it to volume 1b. This is a 5.5 x 8.5 inch Stillman & Birn Beta, softcover. I used it mostly for classwork, and color tests. Very much a working sketchbook.
My food sketching challenge is complete! I have amazed myself that I completed this challenge! Looks like this will capture the last of the dining out for awhile, as I’m now in lock-down due to COVID-19.
The complete sketchbook. I learned so much in the two years it took me to finish this book. I had multiple sketchbooks going during this time. I was really still struggling to establish the regular practice and habit that I wanted, as well as to build my drawing skills. I’m pretty sure I may always be working on both!
Food sketches and color tests were a big focus for much of the rest of my very first sketchbook. This is an A5 Leuchtturm Sketchbook, which I was beginning to realize was not very good paper for the wet techniques I prefer. That did not stop me from playing with and finishing the book. Here continues my tour through Sketchbook 1A.
Love this Lasagna sketch!
Here I am testing Monte Amiate Natural Sienna, Geothite, Naples Yellow, and Quincridone Gold.
More tests of Monte Amiate Natural Sienna and Goethite, this time with Buff Titanium, and Van Dyke Brown. I also Tested Transparent Pyrrol Orange versus Pyrrol Orange.
This is the Big Impact palette produced by Expeditionary Art and Uma Kelkar. I was testing out what kind of mixes I could achieve with it, in order to get a feel for it.
My primary palette, as it was when I finished this sketchbook in February.
In January 2020 I started the Buildings Course by Liz Steel. I love her work, and her classes! She is an inspiration to me! I decided to use this sketchbook, though I had several going at the time, in an effort to finish it off.
House Sketch & Toilet Paper Delivery. Watercolor pencil in Leuchtturm Sketchbook. Size A5.
I believe this was my very first attempt at sketching my house. It may be my only attempt to date, now that I think about it.
After this, my sketchbook efforts get quite sketchy indeed. I wanted to sketch daily, but missed the mark, so I’d leave pages blank. Sometimes I’d fill them in with either notes of what I wanted to sketch, or of quick pencil thumbnails. The next ten or so pages of this sketchbook are quite a hodgepodge of miscellany and incomplete pages. Eventually I simply moved on, and now this is like a time capsule of those very first, very insecure efforts!
Sketchbook pages from vol 1A, Leuchturrm Sketchbook A5
Here is when I started to realize that maybe the paper in this book was giving the troubles and not my skills. The bleed through that was happening is what convinced me this paper was not well suited to the watercolor techniques I was most interested in.
Draw Your Day style, first page in my first sketchbook.
My very first dedicated sketchbook was definitely a rough thing. I started it in 2018 with an attempt to Draw Your Day, as I was inspired by Samantha Dion’s book by the same title.
My colors were too pale, and it was bleeding through, and I thought I was painting “wrong.” It would take me almost two years to realize it wasn’t me, it was the paper.
Lesson… paper makes a big difference!
Sketchbook Volume 1a
Sketchbook Volume 1a
Sketchbook Volume 1a
Sketchbook Volume 1a (Credit: Cauldron design by Amy Cesari) Also, Sketching Now Watercolor class work.
Since my intention was a daily sketchbook, and I wasn’t keeping up with that, I left blank pages on the idea that I would “catch-up” later. I still tend to do that. I rarely catch-up! So in April 2019 I decided to just go back in and start sketching in those blank pages.
Sketchbook Volume 1a.
V. 1a
v 1A
v. 1a
Looking back I can see how much I was experimenting and learning. I wanted to capture the same things I am still seeking to capture in every day life, with everyday sketching. I was playing a lot with different tools, including watercolor pencils.
I almost didn’t post this since the work is what I would consider terrible, and tragically beginner, and not at all as wonderful as what I see others post. But then, it is far to easy to compare ourselves, and utterly forget that most people are not posting their beginner work, but their work after a decade or more of practice. Many are professionals. It has taken me a long time to realize that I’m not required to produce professional grade art work without any training or any practice, starting from my very first effort. In fact, what a damaging idea, yet so many of us carry it. I certainly do! So here is my beginner work, raw, and rough, and terrible, yet beautiful in its beginnings and in its ability to capture where my journey begins.
Jamie's Sketchbook 