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Virtual Traveling (with Street View World Tour) - Urban Gardens

I missed a couple of months this summer, but was happy to be back for the October Street View World Tour! This month, we were drawing urban gardens, and a guest artist was Isabell Seidel. As we watched her weave a pattern of shapes on the page, a conversation about how she started using more flat brushes came up, and then a topic of mixing greens came up - an evergreen interest of mine! A subject of viridian green and how to survive having it in the palette was dear to my heart :) It was a pleasure to look at the urban gardens - what a great topic and such interesting places we visited!

If you are not familiar - A Street View World Tour is a fun, no-pressure gathering hosted by Jenny Adam and Eleanor Doughty via Gage Academy. You can learn more about these monthly free events and about these locations at the links above.

My previous participations include a trip to Kharkiv, Ukraine where I was the guest artist, Drawing Sky Holes, Kenya, Boats, Night Life, Hawaiian Foliage, Light and Shadow, and Japan, Ohio, Arizona and Taipei, Convenience Stores Around the World, Castles, Portugal, Boats around the world, and Hawaii (I am quite sure that I participated in a few more but I am not sure I ever posted about them - will try to find and add to this collection!)

Practicing My Workshop Before the Trip

This week I took my portable printmaking kit, which I will be using in the upcoming classes, to 2 different locations.

First one was virtual travel - but I was allowed only things that were in my "workshop bag". I was drawing with the Street View World Tour - hosted by Jenny Adam and Eleanor Doughty via Gage Academy. I had limited amount of time, so I did only one sketch while Sarah Bixler painted O'ahu, Hawaii in gouache - I wanted both to travel there in person and paint this in gouache!! But with the restrictions on that day, this is what I came up with:

And then I had the pleasure of being introduced to a new (for me) little lake by my friends. With a shady path, some buildings against the mountains, lots of different greens to reflect in the water, and various birds to sketch, it felt like a mini adventure! This time, my kit went on location and got another workout!

Virtual Traveling (with Street View World Tour) - Boats throughout the world!

On the first Thursday of each month, a lovely group of people from all over the world gets together to sketch from the google street views. This month we were drawing boats and a guest artist was Nina Johansson - whose careful weaving of the ink line was very therapeutic and her demonstration of varied line made with a custom fude nib in a popular TWSBI pen - was a pleasure to watch. We looked at boats in Stockholm, London, and Hong Kong and every single drawing below challenged me in a new way. I am not brave enough to sail in any of these based on my drawings - but I am braver about the general idea of drawing boats after this hour!

My previous participations include a trip to Kharkiv, Ukraine where I was the guest artist, Drawing Sky Holes, Kenya, Boats, Night Life, Hawaiian Foliage, Light and Shadow, and Japan, Ohio, Arizona and Taipei, Convenience Stores Around the World, Castles, Portugal (I am quite sure that I participated in a few more but I am not sure I ever posted about them - will try to find and add to this collection!)

Virtual Traveling (with Street View World Tour) - Lisbon, Portugal!

I traveled (virtually) to Lisbon this week! (It is definitely on my list of places to visit in real life - but for now this was great! :) I joined monthly online gathering of #streetviewworldtour - and had lots of fun drawing with a nice group of people (there were MANY this time!).

This month a guest artist was Koosje Koene whose art I've been following for quite some time. Her presentation was wonderfully candid and her love for pentel pocket brush is something I share!

My previous participations include a trip to Kharkiv, Ukraine where I was the guest artist, Drawing Sky Holes, Kenya, Boats, Night Life, Hawaiian Foliage, Light and Shadow, and Japan, Ohio, Arizona and Taipei, Convenience Stores Around the World, Castles (I am quite sure that I participated in a few more but I am not sure I ever posted about them - will try to find and add to this collection!)

Virtual Traveling (with Street View World Tour) - Castles!

I was looking forward to the next virtual traveling and sketching event with the A Street View World Tour and wanted to see a demo by @ohn_mar_win whose color and spontaneity of sketching I admire.

But plans changed and it became a day when I had to be in a hospital with my Mom (she is fine and I am writing an update on how my parents are doing for the next week's anniversary of my parents arrival to the USA). So a big part of the the four hours of surgery preparation we spent online - I explained the whole concept to Mom (and nurses), got my pocket printmaking kit out, and positioned it on Mom's bed. We looked for good angles, Mom was watching me draw, use found objects as stamps and I even cut some stamps out of an eraser for the craziest building ever (see first sketch). She enjoyed the demo by @ohn_mar_win a lot and gave me some advice based on it too. A memorable Thursday! :)

My previous participations include a trip to Kharkiv, Ukraine where I was the guest artist, Drawing Sky Holes, Kenya, Boats, Night Life, Hawaiian Foliage, Light and Shadow, and Japan, Ohio, Arizona and Taipei, Convenience Stores Around the World (I am quite sure that I participated in a few more but I am not sure I ever posted about them - will try to find and add to this collection!)

Virtual Traveling (with Street View World Tour) - Convenience Stores Around the World!

This week I enjoyed another great session of #streetviewworldtour - and had lots of fun drawing convenience stores around the world.

A guest artist @ajamesdraws was talking through some of his favorite sketchers and how he builds a scene when he draws, and an explanation of his interesting lines and curved views (“just be a good, slightly drunken uncle at the wedding - dancing confidently and wildly”) got me thinking about a quote that I often visit - from Lynda Barry's One Hundred Demons:

“The groove is so mysterious. We're born with it and we lose it and the world seems to split apart before our eyes into stupid and cool. When we get it back, the world unifies around us, and both stupid and cool fall away. I am grateful to those who are keepers of the groove. The babies and the grandmas who hang on to it and help us remember when we forget that any kind of dancing is better than no dancing at all.”

So after that great speech about the drunken uncle I tried to think less about the results and experiment more - I used some new texture tools and carved some stamps on the go - not all my moves worked but I surely had fun dancing!

My previous participations include a trip to Kharkiv, Ukraine where I was the guest artist, Drawing Sky Holes, Kenya, Boats, Night Life, Hawaiian Foliage, Light and Shadow, and Japan, Ohio, Arizona and Taipei. (I am quite sure that I participated in a few more but I am not sure I ever posted about them - will try to find and add to this collection!)

Virtual Traveling (with Street View World Tour) to Japan, Ohio, Arizona and Taipei.

I had a blast today drawing with the wonderful bunch of people at #streetviewworldtour lead by @herbcoil and @ronkiponk with a guest artist @jeffsuntala - i went completely black and white again with my printmaking - despite very colorful and inspiring street views and had such a great time drawing Japan, Ohio, Arizona and Taipei!

Then when the time came to share the images I realized that Instagram crops them in weird way. I took some time and then liked from crops, then hated them, then thought that I should have made these all black and white instead of preserving creamy color of my paper. All in all - these locations stayed with me for much longer than the 20 minutes that I looked at them while sketching :)

So - which one do you prefer - full versions or cropped? See below! (if you are on a desktop - you can click on any image to see it larger and move between images with your arrow keys)

Cropped versions:

My previous participations include a trip to Kharkiv, Ukraine where I was the guest artist, Drawing Sky Holes, Kenya, Boats, Night Life, Hawaiian Foliage, and Light and Shadow. (I am quite sure that I participated in a few more but I am not sure I ever posted about them - will try to find and add to this collection!)

Virtual Traveling (with Street View World Tour)

This month the Street View World Tour was drawing Light and Shadow and we traveled all over the world. I was late and managed only a tiny sketch during the presentation of the guest artist @jennymouse2003. But I got to do two 20 minute views and after that and had a blast using my printing technique with custom-haircut pentel pocket brush.

My previous participations include a trip to Kharkiv, Ukraine where I was the guest artist, Drawing Sky Holes, Kenya, Boats, Night Life, and Hawaiian Foliage. (I am quite sure that I participated in a few more but I am not sure I ever posted about them - will try to find and add to this collection!)

Drawing Night Life (via Street View World Tour)

This month the Street View World Tour was drawing nightlife! I was late to join drawing a bar in Berlin but like this drawing the best of what I did. We also traveled to Paris for the last two locations. Neon influence by Anni von Bergen @annivonbergen who was a guest artist.

My previous participations include a trip to Kharkiv, Ukraine where I was the guest artist, Drawing Sky Holes, Kenya, Boats, and Hawaiian Foliage. (I am quite sure that I participated in a few more but I am not sure I ever posted about them - will try to find and add to this collection!)

Making Paper Cut Sketches is a Lot of Fun - Try It!

I regularly draw at kid's activities - and often these are really good, intense life drawing classes. But doing that several times a week for several years gets to you and you start thinking up new ways to practice - so I've picked up some color paper and scissors and now challenge myself to make a paper cut-outs of the movements and poses.

I made a folder with all of the sketches done with scissors: https://www.flickr.com/photos/23173190@N07/sets/72157688760574933
A couple of technical notes:

1. Scissors. I love victorinox knives but the scissors were killing my fingers after one class - so I got small scissors from my sewing kit (these actually have rounded tips - I want to try some sharp scissors too soon.

2. Using smaller pieces of color paper was a great idea as I often have to rotate the paper and even fold and move it quickly to catch the shape of the movement and dealing with the large paper was just ugly (and wasteful).

3. Carrying ziplock bag for all the tiny pieces of paper that are leftover saved me from extra cleaning after the class.

4. Having a glue stick and some extra pieces of paper with me gave me a chance to compose some of the pages right on the spot and it felt more like a complex scene made right there rather than a bunch of quick gesture sketches.

I want to try:

1. Some unusual scissors

2. Exacto knife

3. Making more compositions with the holes (negative space) left after I cut out a figure

4. Making multi-part pieces (I tried it with the cello and it did not work well but I think it's worth experimenting.

Sketchbook #112: Black Belt Training

I continue my record of the journey to the black belt - parallel pen, black ink and lots of hot tea during a very early morning training.

Instruments

2017 Treasures Calendar in my Etsy Store

New 2017 Calendar in my Etsy Store!

Sketchbook #99: Trip to Banff - Part III

On the of the hikes (not too far from the crowds of Lake Louise) I found these amazing moss- and lichen- covered rocks that looked like tiny worlds and spent quite a bit of time just looking and trying to find patterns, count how many times on the rock you see each living thing and if the four color theorem can be illustrated with them :)