A Couple Sketches from Great Basin National Park

There are lots of cool things at Great Basin National Park, but the trees are amazing. Twisted by the wind and stunted by altitude, they are like living sculptures.

August - Gray Sketchbook Finished

August was a good month for sketching. I made it to several Urban Sketcher outings, including the 4th Annual West Coast Urban Sketchers Sketchcrawl in Tacoma, Washington. About 150 sketchers from the US and Canada attended the three day event!
I also finished the Strathmore gray toned book I have been using, which is my 3rd sketchbook this year. That is a record pace for me, and I am hoping to complete 4 by the end of the year. Clearly, I do more sketching than blogging...
I finished this book with a variety of techniques from quick ink sketches, compositional value studies and more finished drawings with colored pencil and collage on the gray paper. As usual, more at my Flickr site.

July Sketchbook Pages

July was the month that I finally settled in with this Strathmore gray toned sketchbook. I still wish the paper was a touch darker or lighter. It is such a perfect middle gray that neither black nor white really seems to pop on it. It is a terrific paper, however. Ink, graphite, color pencil and collaged materials all go down nicely. I think I will do another post with the collage drawings. So here are a few more pages of studies from July - just quick practice drawings.

Where Did June Go?

Well, I went camping - and the van did not break down.



I drank coffee, and I sketched my fellow caffeine addicts. And I went sketching with Seattle Urban Sketchers at Fisherman's Terminal. I have been dabbling with collage in this gray Strathmore sketchbook, and I used that in the sketch I did there.

May Sketches

King Street Station with Urban Sketchers.



Went to New York City. Ate at the Pastrami Queen TWICE.



Hello, contour line drawing.

Sketches from April

Went camping.



Drank coffee.



Oh, yeah. Florida.



Drew trees.

For anyone in the area who may be interested, I will be teaching 2 drawing classes at the Daniel Smith store on June 11 and June 18. The classes are part of a series offered by Daniel Smith this summer. For information on the classes visit the Daniel Smith Events page and click the "June" tab. http://seattledanielsmithevents.blogspot.com/

Marker Sketches from Costa Rica

Aagh! When I checked my poor, neglected blog, I realized how far behind I was in posting sketches. I never even finished up the ones from Costa Rica that I did in January!! So this is IT for Costa Rica. Moving on. If you want to see the rest of them, you will need to get yourself over to Flickr where I have every last little scribble that I did there. Hint: there is a handy button on the sidebar that will take you right to my photostream.

Learning about Notan with Mitch Albala

Well, I have been a blogging slacker! But, in my defense, I have been pretty busy since getting back from Costa Rica. I have been taking classes and teaching classes, and trying to keep caught up with everything in between.
In February, I took a two day workshop with landscape painter Mitch Albala. The focus was on exploring composition through the Japanese principles of notan. We did lots and lots of composition studies in simple black marker, worked up to gray scale marker sketches and finally did a small value study in acrylic. I noticed that my best sketches looked very abstract - I had to stop thinking about the "what" that I was drawing.



Drawing notans is somewhat addictive, but MUCH harder when you don't have a master peering over your shoulder and suggesting you crop that shape a little more, or make this one a little bigger. I will be posting more of them soon, but anyone who finds this intriguing should get their hands on a copy of Mitch's book, Landcape Painting. The section on notan is short, but once you get it, you can clearly see how it works in all his paintings.

Tropical Ferries

Taking a ferry trip in a tropical climate is not the same experience as getting on a ferry in the chilly Pacific Northwest. It's hot! Everyone is crowding into the shade! Except the tourists from the chilly Pacific Northwest.

Getting Around in Costa Rica

I know it has been more than a month since my last post and my only excuse is I have been too busy sketching to blog. Three weeks in Costa Rica, sketching every day. So now I am playing catch-up. I will start with a few of the many modes of transportation we used while traveling around this beautiful country.





All sketches done with my new TWSBI Eco Fountain Pen and Faber Castell Pitt Artist Markers. In an effort to keep my supplies light, I only brought 5 colors on this trip. They served me pretty well, although I was getting a little tired of them by the last sketch.

Grayscale Marker Sketch

Starting a new sketchbook often prompts me to switch out my drawing tools. In this case, I am using broad brush tip markers in a Moleskine Sketch. The water based markers like Tombow and Faber Castell Pitt work well on this paper and do not bleed through. In fact, the surface coating of the Moleskine Sketch paper keeps these markers from absorbing instantly and gives you some time to blend, blot or smudge the color. I think I have a little preference for the pigment based ink in the Pitt Big Brush markers.