Category: sketchbook
Dr. Sketchy’s OKC Sunday, 2010.02.21
Tonight’s session will feature Daphne Chardonnay and the Red Hot Mannequins.
4 models, 2 stages, live body painting, drawing contests, prizes, cash bar & great music, ‘nough said!
Join us at IAO’s beautiful new space, 706 W Sheridan in downtown OKC.
Feeling Stumped?
Here are some tools that can help spur your creativity. Don’t try to execute every idea all at once — pick a link at random and follow it.
The Brainstormer (Read a history of The Brainsormer here.)
Directors Bureau Idea Generator
Michael Nobbs‘ 75 ways to Draw More and Draw Your Life
A methodology for creating new ideas (written by professional illustrator Nate Williams)
An extensive list of ideation tools
Keith Haring knew that anything worth drawing once was worth drawing a hundred times.
I like to go to movies and draw in the dark. And I love love love blind gesture drawing.
Join the BookMooch Journal Project (or just browse their blog or their Flickr pool) or 1001 Journals
Participate in the quarterly Worldwide Sketch Crawl Day.
Illustration Friday suggests a new topic once a week!
Following are some idea-generation links oriented toward writers, but they could just as easily apply to image-makers.
No one cares what you had for lunch.
Idea Generator Blog Writing Prompts
Googobs of Creative Writing Prompts
Now rock out with your socks out.
Related Posts
How (and Why) to Title Your Work (Includes some prompts to help you create interesting titles.)
Project Idea: Object Sketchbook
Dr. Sketchy’s OKC One Year Anniversary 2010.01.10
Has it been a year already? Join us tonight to celebrate one year of Dames, Drinking, and Drawing in OKC! Tonight’s show will once again feature Tulsa’s Ilsa the Wolf. Bring ten bucks, a chair, and your crayons.
Ilsa the Wolf, from Dr. Sketchy’s OKC, January 2009. Click image to view source.
Click here to see some more drawings from Dr. Sketchy’s OKC, or to learn more about this whole bidness.
Worldwide Sketch Crawl Day, 2009.09.19
This is what happened today, mixed media on paper, 2009. Click image to view source.
Get your sketchbooks out, tomorrow is Worldwide Sketch Crawl Day # 24.
Sketch Crawl is an excuse to draw whatever’s in front of you or inside your head for a whole day. (It’s like a pub crawl, but a lot more productive.) Challenge yourself, and don’t forget to stretch first. Click here to read more about participating.
I am at the end of my summer sketchbook, an upcycled beauty made by Lindsey Zodrow at Collected Thread here in OKC. I’m transitioning over to another upcycled sketchbook by Sparrowtracks, and I may dip into some Moleskine kraft-cover books.
Looking for some ideas? Have a look at the sketchbooks of Doug Chayka and Debby Kaspari. Or, download one of two pocket guides created by artist Michael Nobbs, 75 Ways to Draw More and Start to Draw Your Life. Go!
Project Idea: Object Sketchbook
Are you looking for a way to jump-start your creativity? Get a small sketchbook and devote it entirely to studies of a single object. Draw (or represent) your object as many ways as you can think of, using as many media as your book will hold. Here are some ideas, with links to examples, mostly of my work, some from other artists:
Mary, figure session 2, ink on paper, July 2009 by Sarah Atlee. Click image to view source.
STYLES AND TECHNIQUES gestural, blind contour, continuous line, sketchy, graphic or hard-edge, fat lines, thin lines, no line, busy, calm, realistic, abstract, cartoony, calligraphic, using your non-dominant hand, local color, non-local color, cross-hatching, rectilinear, curvilinear, verbal description, typographical illustration, dark, light
Two sketchbook heads, acrylic on paper, June 2009 by Sarah Atlee. Click image to view source.
MEDIA AND TOOLS pencil, pen, marker, colored pencil, conte crayon, crayola crayon, charcoal, digital, photograph, collage, frottage, xerox, watercolor, pastel, ink wash, fabric, thread or stitches
Valuables in here and Non-tweets, ink on paper, July 2009 by Sarah Atlee. Click image to view source.
POINT OF VIEW close up, far away, all positive space, all negative space, static, dynamic, alone, with other objects, from above, from underneath, in profile, on edge, repeated or in a pattern
That should keep us busy for awhile, yes?
Dr. Sketchy’s with Annie Cherry & Bindlestiff Willie 2009.07.12
Come on out to Dr. Sketchy’s Anti Art School this Sunday evening at aka gallery. Our featured models this week are Annie Cherry and Bindlestiff Willie. It’s getting pretty crowded, so bring a chair!
Dr. Whatskies? Click here to learn more.
You do this in Oklahoma City? Yes, yes we do.
This post is part of NaBloPoMo for July 2009.
Worldwide Sketch Crawl Day 2009.07.11
090711 Sketchcrawl 08 by Flickr user Borromini Bear. Click image to view source.
Via the SILA blog.
Today is the 23rd International Sketch Crawl Day! Go ye and make drawings in ye Books of Sketch. Browse the SketchCrawl Flickr pool here.
Hey, Okies: who wants to converge for the next Sketch Crawl, in more or less October? (The official date has not yet been released.) All we have to do is draw. Let’s talk about it.
This post is part of NaBloPoMo for July 2009.
Tools I Use: My Favorite Pens
The Pen Drawer.
Oh, pens, how I love each and every one of you. Below are some of my favorites.
The Old Standby: Sharpie Ultra-Fine Point.
Pros: Long-lasting as long as they stay capped between uses. Writes on a variety of porous and non-porous surfaces. Inexpensive and easy to find in bulk. Very durable tip, will stand up to quite a bit of abuse. Decent color selection.
Cons: Smelly. Bleeds on paper. They will write on top of acrylic paint, but as the ink is solvent-based, the acrylic will dissolve and clog the pen tip. This solvent will also make paper turn yellow after a few weeks, sooner if the drawing is exposed to air and sun.
My water-based friends: Pilot Razor Point and the Papermate Flair black felt tip pens.
Pros: Very durable. Both deliver black lines with reliably uniform thickness. Easy to find at office supply stores. Good for ink wash drawings (this one was made with the aid of a Niji Waterbrush). I also use them to write down loud thoughts.
Cons: They only write on porous surfaces, not good for mixed-media work. Limited range of colors available.
Not So Much: the Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pen and Staedtler Pigment Liner.
I tried these while in search of alternatives to the Pigma Micron (why, I can’t remember).
Pros: Archival ink. Durable tips. Waterproof, writes on a variety of surfaces. The Faber-Castell pens come in Sepia, which is not bad, but the ink is almost indistinguishable from black.
Cons: Both pens are fairly expensive for felt tips. I find the tips, for all their durability, are not flexible enough to produce satisfying lines, especially with the larger sizes.
The Champs: Pigma Micron 01 and Bic Round Stic Grip Fine.
Micron pros: Microns have a flexible tip that will produce strong lines and fine detail if treated gently. They come in many sizes, though I stick to the 005, 01, and sometimes the 02. Multiple colors available. Will write on porous and non-porous surfaces. Waterproof when dry. The ink does not bleed on most papers. Microns have a strong fan base: check out this Flickr group, for instance.
Micron cons: Expensive if you buy them one at a time. I buy them in boxes of twelve from Dick Blick. The tips wear out fairly quickly, and can be ruined easily by dropping the pen or leaving the cap off. The ink takes a few minutes to dry, and when wet, will smear on surfaces like acrylic.
Bic Stic pros: Oh my goodness, I love drawing with this pen. Incredible tonal range. Stands up to plenty of abuse, including leaving the cap off indefinitely, storing them in my hot or cold car, dropping them, shoving them through my ponytail for safe-keeping, etc. Long-lasting. The ink is gel-based but not entirely waterproof.
Bic Stic cons: Very non-archival. I get around this problem by turning my drawings into acrylic gel transfers. The Medium-point Bic Stic is prone to clumping and smearing (arg!), and unfortunately, the Fine-point is not easy to find in office-supply stores. I order them by the dozen.
For more pen reviews, browse the links below. Happy drawing.
The Pen Addict
The Tools Artists Use
Doodlers Anonymous Flickr group
Doodlers Anonymous website
Karo: The Quest for the Perfect Pen
This post is part of NaBloPoMo for July 2009.