Sketchbook Project: Limited Edition

I did it.  I signed up for The Sketchbook Project.  I missed the deadline for the regular 2012 Sketchbook Project, but this year they’re doing another one with an April 30th deadline.  How the regular project works is you sign up and they send you a blank sketchbook, and you fill it up however you like and return it to them, and it’s catalogued and stored at the Brooklyn Library of Art, and whenever anyone checks it out to look at it, you’re notified!  If I had signed up last year and gotten my book turned in already, it would be going on tour starting in April before being catalogued at the BLA.  But with this project, instead a spread will be chosen from my sketchbook before cataloguing, and it will be published in a series of art books coming out in the fall!  5000 artists will be contributing…including MOI!  I’m so freaked.

I recently read Danny Gregory’s book, “Everyday Matters,” in which he deals with a trauma by teaching himself to draw, and in doing so, realizes it makes him look for and see beauty in everyday stuff.  That really made me want to do a similar sketchbook.  So I chose from the list of themes with that in mind, and my theme is Create and Capture.  I plan to do pen and ink sketches of everyday things in my own life, plus freeform line drawings (I should probably put some of those up here, since I don’t have any) and wing it other than that!

Pretty please send me positive vibes that the muses will be friendly!!!  I’ll keep you posted on how it’s going!

Oh, here is one of my freeform line drawings, because what’s an art blog post without a piccie?

It’s Sharpie on sketchbook paper, 9×12 inches.

Face #2

I made myself a (roughly) 5×5 inch journal to do my faces in.  I probably won’t use it…LOL…I’m flighty, after all, and I like to switch things up.  But I like making little pamphlet-stitch booklets and I had some extra Stonehenge paper sitting around cut up, so I tore it into 7 11×5 strips and folded them and punched them and sewed them up with the last of the dental floss.  Mmmmm cinnamony.  Then I drew her.  I used all kinds of markers and then watercolor paints to color her in.  She’s on cover stock (my absolute favorite Hammermill that takes markers better than anything I have ever tried ever), because I made the cover out of that.  I made the cover out of that because I thought I’d do the cover illustration in Sharpie.  That just didn’t work out.  I learned a lot today.  For instance, I have learned that I don’t really like doing faces in marker.  Hey, learning is good!  Here is she is (smiling for you, Maryann):

And then, because I took a picture of it, too, here is my journal page for today:

I like to write in multiple layers going all directions in multiple colors (Inkjoy pens today), then paint over that with watercolors.  Then add a little writing that sums up the theme of the whole process.  My Yarka paints are the sequel set, mostly light and bright secondary colors and tertiary colors (turquoise, fuschia, violets, etc.), so I did some mixing with them today to get some more organic colors.  I’m kinda tired of >gasp< fuschia.