Sketching, Illustration, Design and Everyday Life.
Copyright by © Nina Khashchina except where noted.
Mushrooms are amazing - they are not plants and they are not animals - they belong to their own kingdom of Fungi and the part that we eat is what a huge and very happy organism produces - a fruit. I love drawing mushrooms, looking at them, learning about them, gathering them - and eating them too. This is a soup that I make out of dried mushrooms or fresh ones.
I've been thinking about upcoming anniversary of the beginning of all the things that defined last year of our lives: pandemic, lockdowns, new social norms. And one of the last "normal" things I did before this happened was go on our annual "blooming mustard and trees" outing with Suhita. So almost exactly a year to the date after we went to the same spot and sketched the field and garden again, talking and sketching side-by-side, we met again. Masked and all - but it felt almost normal. So nice!
Here is a link to a blog post I did about the same outing in 2019:
https://blog.apple-pine.com/2019/02/saratoga-public-library-crossed-off-my.html
Check out Suhita's Instagram for her amazing long panorama of this view.
And here are my sketches from 2021:
I enjoy watching other people flipping through their sketchbooks and paint, be that a slow step-by-step or a timelapse of a longer session. And I wanted to share more of my process too. But I did not enjoy making these videos because it would take a long time to set-up before and a long time to put away after the video session.
I tried different solutions and here is what works for me pretty well now: I can keep this on the table and it takes only popping my phone in the holder and adjusting of lighting situation to start making a video!
Things that were happening in February, things that will happen in March - sketches, notes, doodle pages used as protectors in my sketchbook (gouache smudges if you carry your sketchbook everywhere and surprisingly enough even these days I carry it a lot!). Masking tape to mark area on my table for the video I was recording.
A couple of weeks ago I wanted to re-pot some of my new tiny plants and while I was looking for soil I found a bulb! It had a very pale hint at wanting to grow into a real plant so I put it in some water and added to the story of my day - along with quick portraits of the repotted tradescantia and my notes of the blues that I carry in my gouache palette.
