Some sketchbook work that has accumulated recently

March 17, 2021

I took an image from Pinterest. I believe it is in Iceland. I tried to make the picture my own. I am still working out some different things in painting landscapes, and I still need more practice although I think I need to go back to drawing people for a while. I am starting to feel out of practice. Although I am also not very good at practicing. I should practice practicing.

Here’s a slightly different angle.. in case it makes it look more interesting.

I was mainly trying to figure out floral patterns and placement here.

I was looking at a couple different things here. I was playing with composition and experimenting with how this paper reacted to watercolor paint.

A colorful doodle and some planning for how I was going to deal with my sketchbook falling apart last summer. I also threw in some clipping of different places that I thought were pretty and inspiring.

These were tracings of the original drawings I did for a couple of botanicals that I will eventually get back to. Someday I would like to use these to create a collage with colored paper. I think it would be a fun experiment that might turn out real… — These were tracings of the original drawings I did for a couple of botanicals that I will eventually get back to. Someday I would like to use these to create a collage with colored paper. I think it would be a fun experiment that might turn out really cool. Or it could be a disaster, who knows?

This was actually supposed to go in the first post, but I must have overlooked it, whoops. Here is a rhino I thoroughly enjoyed drawing a few years ago

So there you go, a few more images from flipping through the old sketchbook.

Sketchbook Cover

March 3, 2021

After rebinding my sketchbook last July, I finally got around to decorating the cover, so no more rollin’ around with a plain old cardboard cover! To be honest it looked better before I sprayed Crystal Clear on it, but I wanted to protect all my hard work. Everything just got a bit darker, especially with the teal background. It all but disappeared. It’s okay though.. it was something of an experiment anyway and it is just a sketchbook. The idea is there though. I am thinking about recreating it on watercolor paper…. maybe…. We shall see!

Because the link to Instagram never wants to update

February 18, 2021

Yep….. I have done everything I can possibly think of to get the link to Instagram to continuously update. It will work fine for a while and then… BAM…that’s it. To be honest I am probably just doing it wrong, so my plan is to do a catch up post to start everything out and then just keep it up. It could be an interesting exercise to chronicle everything in this way, although I am not the first and I know I won’t be the last. Here are a few highlights from the last few years.

This was inspired by a challenge from a fountain pen company that I knew I wanted to come back to when I had more time.

I spent days sewing this for a hat band… unfortunately my dog found it before I could put it to use and destroyed it. Someday I will make it again and it will be even better the second time around. Don’t worry, the dog still lives, we just didn’t ta… — I spent days sewing this for a hat band… unfortunately my dog found it before I could put it to use and destroyed it. Someday I will make it again and it will be even better the second time around. Don’t worry, the dog still lives, we just didn’t talk for a couple of days.

A drawing in Silverpoint of me and my grandfather. I am looking forward to seeing how it tarnishes as it ages.

This is an Indian Paintbrush that I painted as an ode to my childhood in Texas. I have two more in the works that I plan as part of a series I want to call Texas Flowers.

A couple of pages from my current sketchbook where I was experimenting with clouds in watercolor and playing with a few techniques.

This is another experiment where I used some of the things I learned in the above images….. Couldn’t help but include my fancy paintbox that I made in this shot.

This is a Mongolian Warrior that I sketched from one of my reference books.

Just adding a bit of detailing to a skirt I got from a thrift store and changed almost everything about it…. Can I claim I made it that point? I just utilized the foundation…. anyway, it is one of my favorite skirts now.

I know people aren’t “supposed” to see the thumbnails and the ugly sketches but sometimes there is a charm in them that the final image doesn’t have, but also there is something special about holding on to where the idea started and how it grew…. or flopped as the case may be sometimes.

I enjoy injecting a bit of humor into my images, even if it does only amuse me in the end… and oh how I struggled with how to do the mint delivery system and whether or not to use Mentos as imagined or to play it safe and put Mintos… in the end perhaps I should have thrown caution to the wind and kept it a cannon… but that is what photoshop is for…. nothing has to be final ever again.

No sketchbook is complete without a fuzzy lovable carnivore baby.

Some process work of an image from my children’s book that I haven’t given up on getting published some day. You can see this one completed in my portfolio. I decided to include many of the images from this story in my portfolio because it was almost all I worked on for a couple of years.

I bound my current sketchbook in October 2018 and started into the first of 400 pages right away. This thing is going to last forever…. well sort of the binding unfortunately started to fail so I had to painstakingly take it apart and rebind it this past summer. It barely fits into the leather cover now but at least the spine shouldn’t break down now.

A fresh new spine before it loosened it up from use.