Finish it Friday

A couple of weeks ago I got the idea from another blogger to reserve my Fridays for the concept of Finish it Friday. Meaning that instead of starting new projects I spend my Fridays focused on finishing things that I have already started. So far it is working out well for my creative life and helping me get organised and see myself making progress. It is working so well that I am thinking about broadening the concept to the rest of my life as well as a way to get more done around the house. Will see how it goes. 

Today at I finished a blog post and hopefully by the end of the day this sketchbook will be filled up and archived.  

Preparing to push my sketching boundaries in Oxford

By going out and sketching Oxford whenever I get the chance. Currently that means going out into the city center with my sketchbooks, pens and paints 1-3 times a week. I am not sure if this city will ever get boring to me. Just more familiar. The USK Oxford workshop begins this coming Tuesday and I am super excited. Then my kids have one more week of school before being home for the summer.  

The first cut. Tough choices in art and in life.

That first cut is so hard. Cuts can't be taken back. No turning back. This is when I pay for using both sides of the paper. Destruction as part of creation. Choices need to be made. Something will be destroyed. Cut cut cut. Thank you Sketchbook Skool. 

London mini-holiday

Became more mini when a three day two night overnight in the big city became one uncomfortable overnight in a bad AirBnB rental. At least I got some sketching and cafe visits out of the trip!

Stretching myself

The Sketchbook Skool assignment for the week was to collect sketches and after six days cut them out and collage them in my sketchbook. The instructor Jonathan Twingley uses a dip pen and ink to make bold expressive marks. Sounds like an exciting challenge. I got started a few days late but I was motivated. Then my four year old got sick. Away went the dip pen. While I was able to sketch during this period it was mostly inside of books and it was far from free and messy. Mostly blind contour drawings of my sick kid filled the pages. But I have been filling loose pages with watercolor, gouache and a bit of ink for months so I got that stack out and started cutting. What fun! Stay tuned to see what I ended up making with all these bits and bobs. 

Notre Dame took my breath away.

Growing up in the States I have never seen anything like Notre Dame before and it left me speechless. Having the chance to walk around and take it in before sitting down and sketching it was a huge privledge. Walking around inside during mass I felt both French and Catholic for a few minutes. 

Drawing Tip: Blind Contour Drawing Warmup

Want to improve your drawing? Don't know when to draw or what to draw? How about taking on the 75 Day Drawing Challenge? Started by watercolor artist and sketchbook keeper Brenda Swenson it has grown and developed into a popular artistic challenge for many people to customize. The only rules that stay constant are the 75 day length and using ink or another permanent line. I made the challenge my own with ink and doing blind contour drawings. A blind contour drawing is a drawing where you focus mostly on the outline, don't lift your pen as you draw and don't look away from your subject (so you don't look at your paper) while you are drawing. Do this for 75 days in a row (more or less) at a fairly consistent time for maximum effectiveness. I find the morning while I drink my coffee to be a good time for this activity. It can take as little as 5 minutes, but some people go all out and spend twenty minutes or longer on their drawings. I am content treating this as a warmup activity and spending rarely more than ten minutes on my drawing. I have also started journaling in the pages and including the date and weather forecast in the margins. Sometimes I fill in the drawings with details and sometimes I add bits of color. But they all start with a blind contour line that I mark the start with dot and an S and the finish with a dot and an F to keep me honest.

It was a hard challenge for me to start but once I got going I noticed a change in my drawing and easily continued. Until around day 35 when I realized I had been doing this challenge for over a month and wasn't even halfway done. I am not used to drawing challenges that last longer than a month. But I made it through that bumpy period and now here I am almost at day sixty and with well over 100 blind contour drawings under my belt and I am looking at ways to keep this habit going after 75 days and after my sketchbook is full. I'll probably just start a new sketchbook with simple graph paper and save the next Moleskine from my clearance stockpile for something else.

Where to go? What to draw? Everyday Matters Challenge.

I get to go on some fun sketching adventures around Boston and when we travel. But sometime I have at home to draw and want to draw something real not something imagined and don't know what to draw. Am getting sick of drawing my coffee cups and couple of plants. That is where the Everyday Matters drawing prompt list challenge comes in handy. Going through that list one at a time at whatever pace suits me. Also, I am impatient to finish up this small sketchbook so I can move on to a larger non-wirebound sketchbook. Next up is a lamp.

Oh how I wish these Toms fit me!

My Color Free Weekend

Over the weekend I gave myself the challenge to draw exclusively in black and white and the various shades of grey to help myself see value better. I didn't get as many chances to draw outside this weekend as I would have liked so I may keep the challenge going in my travel sketchbook for awhile longer. I am happy to be using some old shades of grey Pitt markers after years of neglect. Very happy that I took on this extra challenge. Wish I had done something like this when I was in art school.

started out with painting a dried and pressed flower from the safety of my studio

then moved on to drawing ginkgo leaves and seedpods at the school playground while my kids played

an owl from my imagination and sketches from the Museum of Natural History in NYC

My bagel and the organ at church.

Tick tock. Don't waste your time.

New beginnings. I have time. Now what? Time to make some plans and set some goals.

What is wasting my time? What gives me life and energy? Lots to think about. A schedule is probably needed.

What is life giving and what is life sucking for you?

For the record I totally "wasted" my time this morning walking around the neighborhood after dropping off my daughter and stopping to draw whenever the mood struck me. It was fantastic and I totally plan on doing it again tomorrow. Except tomorrow I will bring a stool with me.

Moleskine paper doesn't behave well with watercolor washes. Great reason to dust off my dry media and focus on drawing.

Repeating myself. Draw more, paint more, write more.

More more more! Also sleep more to keep myself energized. I went to bed early last night and woke up this morning feeling wonderful. Good morning indeed! We are going back to NYC this weekend and I am excited to bring my sketchbook to various places. After a bit of a slump I am back to drawing whatever comes to mind and strikes my fancy and enjoying it. Case in point moths are interesting to draw but I needed to draw a bird to eat them so I could sleep last night.

moths did not haunt my dreams last night

A jewelry box and a story.

My grandparents brought this back for me from India. During Liz Steel wonderful, brilliant and informative lessons in Sketchbook Skool she showed us how she does her lovely intricate teacup watercolors. But I don't have a single teacup only coffee mugs and those just aren't the same. But I do have this intricate little box that my grandparents brought back from India for me. I knew it was my subject for the lesson but I drew a few mugs first because I was frightened by the shape and details of this box. Eventually I completed it and I feel despite some wonky bits I did it justice and drew it with love and care.

Perfection. I don't have it.

Some artist's seem to attain perfection in every sketchbook page. Andrea Joseph is an example of this type of artist. She hosted the most recent week at Sketchbook Skool and I found putting on her skin and drawing with a ballpoint pen for two days to be too much for me. She's a wonderful and super talented artist but her sketchbooks are far too perfectly composed for how I work. For me sketchbooks are to work out problems, record events and try things out. And for that I need freedom to mess up. Good for her for sure but I need to find my own way. But I can still enjoy her beautifully rendered drawings of often humble objects. 

Ball point pens drawn with ball point pens. I'm sure if I tried this I would end up with a smeared mess on my hands. 

Friday Favorite : Art Institute Sketch

I drew a lot on vacation. And I have drawn a lot since I have been back home. This one is from a photo I took outside the Art Institute Chicago during our first night there. Walking around the city at night was a memory I feel privileged to have and wanted to be sure to capture the memory in my sketchbook. Since I don't like using pencil using the wash and ink or fast and slow technique by blocking out the basic images in color using watercolor before drawing. That served as my guide when I slowly drew everything I could see. There are a couple of slightly wonky areas but overall I am quite pleased to have this image in my sketchbook. This is my favorite drawing of the week. Thank you Sketchbook Skool for the technique to tackle such a complex image and the focus to keep going and finish it. 

A lot of drawing and a little text. This is how I will remember my life.

Sketchbook Skool (not a typo) and using my Moleskine.

I don't think Moleskine sketchbooks are worth their $15 pricetag. But when I found them on clearance for $4 I bought all the hardbound ones they had and then they sat in a drawer while I focused on mixed-media paper and watercolors. But now that I am signed up for Sketchbook Skool and drawing even more often than before I find their sleek pages calling for some ink drawings. I managed to only fall a little behind with the weekly lessons while traveling and am working to catch up. This weeks assignment is six self-portraits of selfies using various techniques. This is not a super fun assignment for me as I am not very interested in drawing myself, especially in great detail. But I am putting in the time and effort and having fun despite myself. It's a good exercise and maybe someday it will become part of my art habit. Thank you Koosje Koene for the push to break out of my artistic comfort zone. 

Me and my little clone posing for an iPad selfie.