Sketching, Illustration, Design and Everyday Life.
Copyright by © Nina Khashchina except where noted.
Last week I finished a sketchbook #136. It spans just about two month from mid-July to mid-September and is filled with sketches about a trip to Lake Tahoe, reports on my flowers, friends and family members - done in person or during video conversations. It also has some of my latest experiments and lots of ink and gouache, tape art, monoprinting and stencils.
I made a video of the flip through the sketchbook and you can find it here:
Here are highlights from last week:
I met a new cat and spent time drawing with some wonderful art friends, I took our Nonagenarian to get a flu shot and I had some lovely video conversations with my parents who are already experiencing fall weather.
I drew mini sunflowers many times as they wilted more and more. I was thinking about if I need color to communicate which flower it is and if sunflower needs color to communicate its identity.
And I drew straw flowers and a bunch of pumpkins and gourds to celebrate the beginning of the autumn. Pumpkins I sent to friends and gourds I kept for myself.
I've been thinking about some epistolary novels recently and ways how conversations survive time and space differences and how to translate it into surviving differences in opinions. And because of all these thoughts latest spread in my sketchbook looks like a letter I would send. And what is this blog if not s series of visual notes and letters? Hence I am adding it here :)
I spent a few days obsessively playing with all sorts of oak leaves and acorns. The more I looked at them and the more varieties I found on my walks the more colors and textures I wanted to add to my collection.
I use a "save" feature on youtube a lot - I keep playlists on many topics and not only go back to re-watch videos that I found useful but also just try to have a list of "to watch" and put new videos there to avoid binge-watching things when I am procrastinating - I add them there and watch later - during the special "youtube time" (things we do to trick ourselves! :)
As I recently realized you cannot save videos that are marked that they were "made for kids". And I kept all my videos marked as "made for kids" - as I thought that watching as someone draws or flips through a sketchbook is an OK activity for kids :) But now I corrected this - and you can save the videos to your lists.
Here is the one I uploaded today to test: