Sketching, Illustration, Design and Everyday Life.
Copyright by © Nina Khashchina except where noted.
As I move northward through my European trip, I am adjusting the mini set of colors that I take with me in my pocket sketch kit. This outing to the Baltic Sea was with thee water-soluble pencils and it worked just right.
My summer travels took me to Copenhagen for a very short visit, and both rain and I had a great time running through the city.:
Probably this post should be titled "I get a break from the large sketchbook from time to time". Or that "the Large sketchbook gives me a break from time to time"? In any case - now that I am almost at the end of this sketchbook I see that the wonderfully challenging and gently expanding my abilities A3 sketchbook (also known as large and cumbersome) got quite a few pages glued in it. On some occasions, it happened by design and on some occasions, it happened by accident. I tape and glue things in my sketchbooks all the time as I enjoy using a variety of papers and in general draw on whatever is available - and then make it work all together.
So here are two more sketching outings.
First - combining acrylic markers and traditional gouache.
This month the Street View World Tour was traveling to Kenya!
Here are a couple of previous adventures that I did with this wonderful bunch of people - including one to Kharkiv Ukraine where I was the guest artist: June and May
I had a blast drawing streets filled with colors and letters and discovered that Post-it notes are amazing for my stencil technique: using the sticky part I can minimize a need for a complex holds which I sometimes need to perform in order to apply ink. And it is especially useful when the time is limited!
This new pencil sharpener (Swordfish The Triple 3 Hole Canister Pencil Sharpener) earned a place in my plein air set (Emma Carlisle mentioned it on her Patreon - for me the winning point was that it can sharpen Woody 3 in 1 Pencils as well as normal and medium-sized pencils).
I am mixing more colors for my acrylic markers, drawing lots of people and treasures, biking, walking, sketching and having an amazing summer! And I'm trying to pick my art supplies for an upcoming travel (hence limited palette ideas you can see on the table).
Sometimes Bike and Sketch is substituted by "Walk and Sketch" - this way I discovered that Jacaranda season is upon us and spent some time enjoying my neighbor's fence.
June 26 - July 1, 2023. Days 486-494 of war.
This week's conversations were circling some domestic issues - what to cook when the weather is so hot and how to fix some things - like my painting pants, my backpack's pockets, or Mom's new accessory - a cane that was gifted to her by a new friend - another refugee from Ukraine who befriended my parents on the street.
Both my parents got new glasses (we are very grateful to the people who assisted in the process!) I drew them with the new eyewear on the first day of July:)
My parents told me about a poem by one of the russian-American poet - Nobel Laureate Joseph Brodsky. I am more familiar with his works in russian than in English, and this poem was written in russian. I never heard or read it and, apparently, it never was published - however, there are video recordings of Brodsky reading it. And here is an article about it in The New Yorker. It is written on the Independence of Ukraine and is filled with anger, accusations, and an ugly-phrased statement that in the end Ukraine "will return". It brought many layers of feelings and thinking and we spoke about it for some time - until it became obvious that it is too painful for all. There is no simple way to convey all the layers - so I will not.
Mom says: "I miss my library. But this missing is not helpful. Let me tell you about new blue flowers that just started blooming next door".
Rudbeckia hirta, commonly called black-eyed Susan caught my eye the other day. A short bike ride at the end of a rather long and complicated work day. It was another semi-planned semi-spontaneous ride with a semi-movable amount of art supplies (yes, I am still complaining about the size of my sketchbook and the fact that neither my foldable chair nor my water bottle can ride in the side pockets of the backpack if my sketchbook is inside). But I was super happy I went and super happy for the company!
I started by drawing an agave and then switched to stencils on the wonderfully abundant yellow flowers with dark shape centers - commonly called black-eyed Susans. And then I did a full-page take with gouache and stencils (and some color pencils at the end).
