Video Tour Through Sketchbook Number 150

I started telling a story of my adventures with the large (A3) sketchbook during the summer but never finished posting all the sketches from it! I still may add more scans with stories to the blog - but for now, here is a video of a flip-through of the whole sketchbook (with some reduction for privacy as usual).

This sketchbook has over ten separate posts with stories of biking and disasters - you can find them here:
https://blog.apple-pine.com/search/label/Sketchbook%20150

Bike and Sketch - Tree in a Garden

Gouache in my A3 sketchbook, some truth about my gouache palette in the photos below. I know I keep promising to fill a new palette with fresh gouache but somehow always end up with this old pencil box as a palette - and at this point, I think it is ok :)

Bike and Sketch Summer: Purple Bush Near Library in Gouache

The school year is upon us and I am catching up on scanning and posting about summer filled with lots of sketching and biking and all sorts of adventures around our home. 

This was a lovely outing on a very bright and rather hot day in July - and another page from my A3 Sketchbook #150 (some of the previous adventures of this sketchbook can be found by the #Sketchbook150 tag on this blog), painted with gouache on location. Sketching from a shade helped but taking a photo of the process was a nightmare - as you can see from some examples below. I am still yet to identify the purple bush - which I think calls for another visit to this place to make another sketch - perhaps when the seasons change? 

A Story of a my Big Sketchbook Painting Disaster

I tried to paint in my A3 sketchbook while standing up. It was a disaster - here is how:

First I decided that I would hold both my sketchbook and a jar with water with one hand. This meant that after the first few minutes, my hand was so tired that I lost control of the jar with water and it flipped and drenched the whole spread with slightly green water. Like this:

After this I decided to not show my frustration to my companions and see if I can save this sketch by throwing everything at it at the same time and limiting the time that I would give it. I declared that I'll be done in 5 minutes and I used my fingers and whole palm to paint quickly. Like this:

Here are some process photos and results:

Last Matilija Poppies of the Season

Before the end of the Matilija poppy season, one more bike ride was taken to the special spot where people are friendly to my spreading art supplies all over the walkway and poppies are growing in a way so that I can see them from all angles. These are very tall plants if you let them grow and often by the end of the season I need a ladder to see them from above yet in this place there are always some plants low enough for me to draw even while sitting (which is a given with the A3 sketchbook im working in now).

The "Large Sketchbook" sometimes gets a break and stays home.

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.

Sketches from the second outing combine pen and ink, gray wash and some stencils. 

Summer Continues: Walk and Sketch

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.

Bike and Sketch: Somehow there is no time and then there is.

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).

Bike and Sketch Adventures Continue! A House with Artichoke Front Yard

Extra long days (happy Summer Solstice a little over a week ago!) and extra large sketchbook with extra great company this week means I went to more biking adventures! 

This time - to paint wonderful purple artichoke flowers :) 

Gouache and stencils in my A3 SKetchbook - process photos are below. 

More Matilija Poppies

These native California flowers (with an unfortunate common name of fried egg flowers:) are still greeting me by the road sides. I had all intentions to do a proper negative painting in one of these but ended up slipping into finger painting and decided to leave it as is.

Bike and Sketch Adventures.

Bike and sketch with my current large (A3) sketchbook and my propensity to take all my art supplies with me (a problem which I claim is a leftover from the stay-at-home covid era*) make for some interesting choices of stops: benches are preferred, sitting on the ground is great too though I take a lot of space around me. But so far I did not find a way to work in this sketchbook while standing and holding it. It is just physically really hard. I am yet to find a pay to prop it against the bike though - this is something I will try next.

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* though anything that lasts this long is no longer a leftover but a new reality - I should just give this new setup a name and then face it. Naming things is important for me - here are some options: "bring all you can paint with", "unlimited choices make you mad", "can you promise to use at least half of this?", "Imagine traveling with this all", "really? printmaking on a bike?" :)

New Sketchbook - Number 150!

I wanted to do something big for the nice round number of 150 - after all, it comes only once! (just like 149 and 151 ;) But the truth is I wanted to do some larger works this summer, and choosing an A3 sketchbook was a simple way of making sure that I would stick to my plan. 

A3 means it is at least twice larger than my usual sketchbook. A3 means that my backpack does not close so when I bend down sketchbook hits me on the head. A3 means that wind can get the book out of my hands. It also means some giant pain in terms of sharing images - scanning this beast takes both time and skill. There is quite a bit of cursing while I work in this sketchbook because everything is different at this scale and sometimes I want to just paint and draw and not solve a new puzzle. But I am enjoying the ride (most of the time :)

Here is the result of the very first outing with the sketchbook #150: Matilija Poppies are such an amazing subject to struggle with!

btw: I filled another A3 sketchbook almost exactly three years ago and finally made a little video of all the pages. Here is a post about it - with a link to the video.