Do Two Fish Make A Skool?

Fishes Teapot by Jo Reimer

 

 

 

I was driving home Saturday from a round of errands when I had this crazy urge to stop at Home Goods just to see if they had something I had to have. I found this teapot! I HAD to have this teapot. It needed drawing and if I didn't buy it someone who doesn't draw might buy it and then that sweet little teapot would never be famous in that special way that teapots get when someone who loves them draws them. I'm still grinning over my find and I hope you'll smile a little, too.

Sketchbook Skool is over for the summer but I'm still drawing, not exactly like a mad woman, but lots, lots for me, at least. It's getting easier. I see the shapes more accurately and feel more confident with my marks and now I can say that I have established a drawing practice, one which I intend to keep up here on out. 

Do I plan to enroll in the next session of SBS? Yes, absolutely. It's been so good for me and for thousands of others. A new session starts in October and both of the two original sessions, Beginning and Seeing, are also available.

Here are some recent drawings, done while on vacation. I'm drawing for several hours each day and enjoying every minute.

As I was drawing this building a man stopped to talk. He's the owner of the local bike shop, a former medical illustrator and flute player. I enjoy the people who stop to talk.

This is Mike's bike shop.

And next door is the kite shop, Once Upon A Breeze.

Drawing my kitchen

This week at Sketchbook Skool our instructor is Tommy Kane who is passionate about detailed drawings. The demo was of Tommy methodically drawing his kitchen so I decided I could do that, too, and I did. This is the one wall of the kitchen at the beach.  I was happy with my drawing until I started coloring the shiny black dishwasher. Maybe I'll just collage some paper on top of the black hole and have a place to journal.

Drawing stuffed birds and old dolls, Sketchbook Skool assignments

Dolly

 I had lots of errands today, not much time to draw, and no compelling subject until I remembered my doll. My grown daughter thinks this doll is scary and won't even look at it, but then she never was one to like playing with dolls. I loved my dolls and cherished the few I owned. I only kept one, though, and only because of the dress she wore, one I made when I was nine... to match my sundress.

Golden Eagle

I had a wonderful time yesterday, drawing birds at our local Audubon Society where there are lots of stuffed animals who patiently posed as I took my time trying to nail the shapes and values. I also tried my hand at drawing live birds at the feeder and one perched on an attendants' hand.

Lisa

 Another day I drew Lisa as she was giving me a pedicure. I wasn't happy with the drawing because it couldn't get the contour of her forehead and nose right, with her head down most of the time and rarely absolutely still. However, she was overjoyed and thanked me for drawing her. One never knows how something simple will touch another person.


When I started this blog its purpose was personal, to keep a record of the art I create each day. Somehow I lost my way and stopped keeping the daily record. I want to start again. While I don't complete a piece of art every day I usually do something creative whether it's painting paper, playing with my gelli plate, taking photographs, gardening,sewing, or even canning. I intend to do a better job of reporting this daily activity by sharing it here on my blog in hopes that what I do matters to someone else, too.

Haystack Rock and other recent collages

Haystack Rock

Haystack Rock is located off shore of the seaside village of Cannon Beach in NW Oregon. The groupings of rock which commands the attention of visitors is quite accessible at low tide and is a popular attraction for children and their parents who love exploring the tide pools at its base. 

Our family spends lots of time in this lovely spot and images of Haystack fill my photo files. It seemed appropriate to see how I might build a collage that incorporates my photos and uses some of my painted papers. The collage is 9 x 12".

Brother Oak

Brother Oak, 9x12, features my photo of an oak tree that grows alongside a small family cemetery on a hillside outside Magazine, Arkansas. The wintertime photo was a rather blah wintertime photo so I 'colorized' it with a wash of blue and added some green to the grass.

I continue drawing in my sketchbook, motivated by the excellent teachers of the first semester of Sketchbook Skool. It has the result of encouraging me to draw every day, sometimes with tools such as colored pencils that are uncomfortable to me. I'd rather slop around paint than sit tediously layering color with pencils. But I intend to try it all and see what I can add to my skill set, and hope in the process to develop better hand-eye coordination and ability to draw what I see.  Here's today's drawing: 

Morning Coffee

Sketchbook Pages, Week One

 I've drawn in one of my sketchbooks every day this week and I intend to keep it up. It's a bit embarassing to post my wonky drawings but this blog is, in my mind, a way to record my work and progress so it serves my own purpose.

I'm working in an 8" square sketchbook I made. The pages are an assortment of watercolor papers, all shapes, sewn together to make nearly full sized pages. I save all my paper scraps as well as paper samples (waste not, want not) and this seemed to be a good use for them. Some papers work better than other. This first page is 7.5" x 3.5" and is sort of the introduction page.



 


 


I did this page yesterday and am NOT happy with it. The pots are okay (I'm working on ellipses which are hard for me) but the pen I used wasn't waterproof so the minute I started adding watercolor the black ink made the page gray preventing me from painting bright colored tulips.

Perhaps you can get a better idea about the sewn together, pieced, pages in this example where the larger but shorter section on the right was zigzag stitched to the narrow piece on the left. I rather like the look.

Sketchbook Skool

I've enrolled in an online workshop series called Sketchbook Skool which was founded by Danny Gregory and Koosje Koene. So far it's great. I hesitated until the day it went online, thinking I didn't really need another drawing class, but I relented when I realized I could use the motivation, the encouragement to draw daily. I've been slacking off on my drawing, so much so that when I pick up a pen to draw it's a real challenge. I want drawing to be easier and I know that with daily practice it gets easier and easier to record what I see more accurately.

My interest is not on being able to draw photorealistically, but to be able to get my lines more or less reasonably placed and to include my emotion about the subject in a drawing. Sometimes I can do it but I'm not consistent. We'll see what comes.

So far I find the first class, taught by Danny Gregory, to be first rate. Danny's the one who got me drawing in the first place with his excellent first book, Everyday Matters, so I know I have nothing to lose by enrolling in his school. There will be other teachers in this six week long session: Roz Stendahl, Koosje Koene, Tommy Kane, Jane LaFazio, and Prashant Miranda, and others in the next sessions.  If you're interested it's not too late to join. Click HERE to learn more.

Here are my first two drawings: