Sketchbook Project

Marge sent me this photo of herself at the Brooklyn Art Library holding the sketchbook which I submitted to the Sketchbook Project. Just look at all those sketchbooks on the shelves behind her. How amazing is that! 28,839 people participated in the project though I don't know how many completed books they actually received.

If you click on the link to the Sketchbook Project you can read more about it.

I enjoyed the challenge of making art on a particular subject in the sketchbook but I don't think I'll do it again. Spending hours and hours doing work that I'm proud of and then giving it away to strangers was a little bit of a struggle, knowing I'll never to see it again unless I get up to Seattle when the books will be on display there from June 10 - 12 at Space/Form Gallery at 2407 1st Avenue, Seattle. But thanks to thousands of participants just like me the exhibit will be a feast for the eyes, an art exhibit like no other.

Other venues:

San Francisco, CA: June 18

Austin, Texas: March 12

Winter Park, Florida:  July 29-31

Atlanta, GA: April 8-9

Chicago, Ill:  July 14-17

Washington DC:  April 11-30

New York City: Feb. 19-27

Portland, Maine:  March 30 - April 1 You can get more information at the Art House website.

The Sketchbook Project – The Beginning and The End

I’m finished!  The title page is complete and the end page is done, too. I haven’t touched the cover and may not do so. It’ll take a lot of handling once it’s back at The Art House/The Brooklyn Art Library and I'm thinking that it's good as is... a simple red cover... maybe with the title stamped across the front. We'll see. And now that I see the ending page published in this post I see that I need to write something more across the top of the photos.

The Sketchbook Project 2011 will be on tour in the USA starting in March and appearing in the following places: Brooklyn, NY - Austin, TX - San Francisco, CA - Portland, ME - Atlanta, GA - Chicago, IL - Washington, DC - Winter Park, FL - Seattle, WA

The Sketchbook Project - Beaverton Farmer's Market

Beaverton Farmer's Market



My routine from May through October is to attend the Beaverton Farmer's Market early on Saturday morning. I buy a pastry from Grand Central Baking Co., buy a cup of coffee and find a bench next to the fountains in the park and do a bit of people watching before actually shopping.

This market is unique in that there are no crafts allowed other than those which are food related such as jams, fruit vinegars, desserts to go and gorgeous floral arrangements. The lanes are lined with around 100 kiosks selling produce, dairy, and meats/seafood direct from the grower.

I take lots of photos of people and produce and color, but at the last market day, shown above, the colors of the surrounding trees were amazing. My camera battery went out after just 2 photos so I ran home to get my dSLR and returned record the incredible color.

The Sketchbook Project - Eastern Oregon

Eastern Oregon

Here's the spread with a photo taken in Pendleton last May showing a wide landscape of fields and a big sky. I found just the right green washi paper to extend the grasses in the left foreground and other bits of papers to extend the fields on either side of my photo. 

The Sketchbook Project - Central Oregon

It seems like more than 2 weeks since I last posted and I'm pushing myself to get at least one post written this weekend. This is Central Oregon, high desert country that's surrounded by mountains and topped with blue sky, a land of lakes and rivers, fields of crops, and wildlife of all kinds.  My intention for next week is to finish this Sketchbook Project.

  

My visits with family and old friends was SO good. While in Dallas my cousins and I went to the Dallas Aboretom and were amazed by the unique uses of squash and pumpkins in the Storybook Pumpkin Village. It was an orange colored vacation.

Everywhere I turned there was orange... trees, pumpkins, and the orange shirts of tens of thousands of Oklahoma State Cowboys. It was a blast to go back for homecoming and visit with college friends. We stayed with my friend from long ago and talked a bit of old times but mostly about who we are today.

In Arkansas we ate barbeque at my favorite place and in my home town we went to Pop's Pond and got in some target practice...

                                           

It was nice to see that I can still hit my target with my dad's old 22.

Quick sketch done at the local airport while my brother worked on his Ultralight, the one that broke a wheel off during an unscheduled landing.

And yes, I did do some sketching here and there. But I find it hard to make art when I'm with people; I need solitude to concentrate on drawing and I preferred to talk with those I love rather than mess with art making. I have plenty of time for that but never enough time for faraway family. However, I took lots of photos to remind me of happy times.

Jim entering his shed

The Sketchbook Project - Mountains

Mt. Hood

Pencil, pen and ink, watercolor crayons.

Mt. Hood is only 50 miles east of Portland and lures many Oregonians to its beautiful slopes for skiing, hiking, fishing and many other sports, both summer and winter. Part of the Cascade Range of volcanic mountains, it often appears to float above the city due to atmospheric conditions.  At 11,230' its distinctive volcanic shape is hard to miss.

The Sketchbook Project - Rivers

Rivers

Oregon, especially the western part, is all about water and mountains and forests and rivers and agriculture. Because we get lots of misty rain we have abundant snow in the mountains, plenty of water in our rivers and streams, and lots of clean water to drink and to irrigate our crops. Our drinking water which comes from the Bull Run Reservoir is so pure that we drink it straight without lots of chemicals or processes to purify it. 

This pier is on the Willamette, near Oregon City. I wish I had a boat!

The Sketchbook Project - Portland

In my sketchbook about Oregon I'm moving from west to east, now pausing in Portland to have a look at a bit of the downtown. Our largest city has a vibrant core, anchored by Pioneer Courthouse Square with the MAX light rail lines radiating from there out to the suburbs in four directions, to Clackamas, Gresham and the airport, to Vancouver, and Hillsboro. Crossing that grid is the streetcar line and a large bus complex. Transportation is easy with free Max rides downtown and computer parking lots in many suburb communities.

Assuring that no one should be thirsty our city fathers placed drinking fountains all over the downtown area, 126 of them. These provide clean, cold running water from 6am until 11pm every day unless there's ice or high wind. They're called Benson Bubblers, after Simon Benson who ordered the first ones to be placed.

My cousin once visited me and when we went downtown in the evening he was amazed at how many people were on the streets, lounging in the Square, bustling to theatres, heading for a restaurant, or simply strolling along the Willamette river that runs through the center of town. It's quite safe in most areas and because many retail stores and restaurants stay open into the evening it doesn't feel closed down and deserted like some cities.  I like it here, a lot.

The Sketchbook Project - Forests

FORESTS

This is one of those shots taken from the passenger seat of my car, driving down the highway at 60 miles an hour. Surprisingly the shot turned out okay, at least for the Sketchbook Project. I cut it in two to fit across the spread and then extended the lines and colors, with a little insert taken within one of the coast range forests.

                              

Ecola State Park - The Sketchbook Project

For this next spread I chose a photo taken from Ecola State Park.

After attaching the photo to the page with a tape runner (double-stick tape) I extended the scene using Derwent Inktense pencils, Caron d'Ache watercolor crayons, and ink.

Then I used plain water and a soft brush to moisten the marks and blend the colors.

The Sketchbook Project -Gray Days

I'm participating in The Sketchbook Project (click on the icon in the sidebar to read more.) and have been mulling around ideas about how I want to proceed. The papers in this 5" x 8 1/4" Moleskine are so thin that actually drawing on them as they are is out of the question as far as I'm concerned and there's not a great deal of time left in the year to draw on every single page. So. I decided to follow Marge Malwitz's lead and glue some of the pages together to create fewer, thicker pages.

What glue to use is the big issue with lots of the people who are working on this project. At MakenArt there's a long post about which glues and pens work best but I didn't read it until I had already experimented with gel medium, YES! paste, and a UHU gluestick, resulting in some badly wrinkled pages. I'm not worrying about that because I'll be making collages on the pages.

I find it so intersting to follow Marge's Creative Process that I decided I'll document my own process for you.  The title I chose from those available is "If you lived here". I'm enlarging the title to "If You Lived Here... Oregon". I'll use my own photos of various places I've been recently in Oregon and extend the photos with drawing and journaling since that's what I do.

My first 2 pages have to do with people's idea that it always rains and is cloudy and gray here in Oregon. It doesn't rain all the time. In fact the rain this week is the first we've had in Portland in 2 dry months. But one CAN count on bits of most days at the coast being overcast.

I happened to have the perfect sheet of gray washi so I cut that to fit and used 3M's 77 spray adhesive to glue it to the page, along with bits of blue washi to indicate the promise of blue skies.

The text under the pictures reads

Some say

it's always gray

here at the western edge

of the USA.

Often - yes, with a gentle mist.

But not always...

See there...

a hint of blue.

The Sketchbook Project - The Beginning and The End

Title Page

I'm finished!  The title page is complete and the end page is complete. I haven't touched the cover and may not do so. It'll take a lot of handling once it's back at The Art House/The Brooklyn Art Library and I'm thinking that it's good as is... a simple red cover... maybe with the title stamped across the front.  We'll see.  And now that I see the End page as a distance, published in this post, I need to write something more across the top of the photos.

The End

The Sketchbook Project 2011 will be on tour in the USA starting in March and appearing in the following places: Brooklyn, NY - Austin, TX - San Francisco, CA - Portland, ME - Atlanta, GA - Chicago, IL - Washington, DC - Winter Park, FL - Seattle, WA