Monday, October 29, 2007

MY TRAVEL SKETCHBOOK






Every time I go on a trip, I load my carryon tote with all this art material and then I use only a little of it. In the meantime, I am dragging around carry too much weight in my bag. I have finally found a nice system I like with a few supplies and I am much happier. I went to a smaller sketch book, one that I can get in my everyday bag as well. It is 5.5" x 8.5" and spiral bound so it stays flat when open. It is very inexpensive but I think I will upgrade to a better quality paper when I have filled this one up. I am enjoying working with the "Elegant Pen" and better paper will give a nicer result. I experimented this weekend with using two colors - brown and black. The brown is more sanguine so has a flesh tone quality. Very fun. Along with these pens, I carry one of those Japanese brushes with the water in the handle. A packet of tissue and a watercolor set the size of a mint tin. It all fits into a plastic bag in case something leaks. I have been thinking how I can get the effect of the Elegant Writer on watercolor paper. I doubt that these pens are light fast. I am going to try liquid watercolor full strength on tygerag and see what happens. I will try that tomorrow.

Flew Southwest Airlines this weekend. Their inflight magazine had an article on the movie "Lonesome Dove" and some great photos which I played around with. These two images were from the magazine. I did some others which I will post another time.

I have made a slide show of my "people hanging out in the airport bored to death" sketches. Some are from this trip and some are from my 11 hour layover in the Toronto airport in September. In Toronto, I used a Copic wide pen with an extra broad nib (about 1 inch!) in a taupe color, to quickly block in the shape and then went back with a sanguine pen to put the detail in. I used a mechanical pencil for the ones I did this weekend. Never have to sharpen them. I found I could very quickly scribble in the shape, then if they hadn't moved significantly, I could go back and do a fast contour drawing. If I still had time, I could go back again and focus on some details - features, hands, feet, etc.

I have been receiving some very nice e-mails from some of you who I have never met. I almost deleted a few thinking they were spam. Be sure and put something in the subject line so I know what it is about.

1 comment:

Nava said...

Sketching bored people at airports is the ultimate pastime. They serve as perfect models, as they are frozen in boredom, and don't tend to move much.

These are wonderful!

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