Sketching, Illustration, Design and Everyday Life.
Copyright by © Nina Khashchina except where noted.
Two More Vacation Sunsets
One of the things that I was looking forward on vacation was sunsets and they did not disappoint!
Maldives: Sky and Ocean.
I saw Maldives from the plane and I saw Maldives from the boat. It looked wonderful but I am sure very different from looking at it from the shore :)
All my time in the Maldives was spent aboard a scuba diving vessel where everything was organized around diving activities. It was a very spacious Soleil 2 filled with people who share interest in underwater adventures. We had three to four dives a day, a comprehensive briefing before each dive and in between we were sleeping and eating. When I was able to spare time and energy from these important activities I tried to squeeze a sketch or two - but all I saw was sky and water :)
The colors were amazing, constantly changing, and frustratingly hard to translate onto paper - which means that I kept trying :) Drawing on separate sheets proved to be a mistake as wind would immediately claim any sheet of paper that was not attached to a heavy object. Humidity was better than I expected so everything was drying really fast. I used my watercolor and gouache kit and my small pocket gouache palette.
Two Days in Singapore
On the way to the Maldives, we spent two very packed days in Singapore. It was expectedly hot and humid, fantastically green and colorful, intriguingly tasty and simultaneously different and familiar!
Before the trip I made a list of places I wanted to see and mostly covered them though it meant over 25 miles of walking, many cab rides (left side but AC!) and lots of subway travel! It would be impossible to list all the things that I wanted to sketch or tell you about! And all the foods we tried! It was a lot and there are many reasons to go back :)
We had a great guide - a sketching friend Andrew Tan - an urban sketcher, comic book artist, illustrator, youtuber and skillshare teacher - known as @drewscape_art on Instagram. Thank you, Andrew, for an AMAZING tour and a great time sketching together!
Here are some highlights from my sketchbook:
Gathering Materials for Sketching While Traveling
My recent travels took me to Asia for the first time in my life. I knew that I would be drawing both on land and water, including underwater. I felt a need to take with me all the colors of the world in all the mediums available to me. It was hard to not spin from all the possible expectations and I spent quite some time trying different combinations in my sketchbook :)
Blue Color Pencils below:
Names and manufacturers (FC = Faber Castell, LU - Luminance, LYR = Lyra; Supra - supra color by carandache; PC = Prismacolor, H = Holbein, Mit = Mitsubishi).
I got myself various papers and drawing materials to draw underwater too - including oil pastels, colored pencils, wax crayons, and regular pencils - you can see them in the post about what is on my table at the beginning of December.
I totally packed too much. But a full story requires a separate post about the trip!
Tips on Elevating Stress Before Travel
In the days right before the beginning of my recent travel, I was swamped with attempts to close projects on all fronts of my life. My stress showed in my inability to finish things, uninteresting choices in colors and design, snappish dialogue, prolonged conversations with myself about boundaries, multiple versions of to-do lists all over the floor around my table, and very dirty hands from inks after refilling my pens. As you can see - neither making lists (something that I do in any situation) nor refilling pens (a very therapeutic activity under different circumstances) worked. But here is what helped:
1) getting online to chat and draw from a windowswap with a friend - using only my portable printmaking tools.
2) going out to draw on location - with a very limited set of tools (two markers and my portable printmaking tools).
Neither of these sketches accomplished what I wanted artistically, but both of these brought me to a much calmer mind state. And a reminder that limits (on time, materials, and other resources) are a very useful tool.
Pumpkin Gragen Continues to Thrive
Pumpkin Garden worked was my "go to" sketching model lately - intricate textures, tangled shapes and gentle collection of colors sitting on one's art table is a sure way to start my day - even if all I have is a three minutes and some dirty post-its (see pumpkinnio sketch below ;)
On My Table: Beginning of December 2024.
November happened super fast! There was a lot of daily sketching between many projects most of which I cannot share (for various reasons). Still, there is an exciting adventure ahead of me - and a hint of what I will be using on this adventure can be found in what's on my table on the first day of December!
Thanksgiving Weekend Brings Pocket Sketching Back
It's been one complicated year! One of my Thanksgiving traditions is to start wrapping up projects and write lists - lists of gratitude, lists of dreams, lists of plans, lists of what worked and what did not this year. I will continue this throughout the end of the year as it is a lengthy project for a planning maniac like me :) But one important thing that already came out of this "pause and regroup" is I cleaned my sketchkit (actually several that blended into one), streamlined it, and while I took some lovely walks, I collected some treasures and drew - in pockets of time, in pocket sketchbooks, with my pocket kits.
Drawing People As They Work Instead of Working
It was Monday and I was planning to do a lot of work. There was A LOT of noise. The rain did not stop anyone. Lively conversation in between the sounds of power tools with some words that I could recognize. No work was happening on my side of the window. Solution? Draw the wonderful mayhem that everyday life is :)
I used the first tools that were available - ballpoint pen and a box of almost empty watercolors.
Enjoyed every minute :)
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