Friday, February 16, 2018

Weekly Joy

Saturday morning Happy ritual: The Indoor Farmers' Market.
Weekly joy. 
With fewer tourists & crowds,
I'm bolder about sketching.
 
After: Another ritual: Library Date with my sweetheart.
We sit next to each other at a big wooden table. 
Shhhhh......
On a high shelf behind us: A soapstone statue.
I wrote: "Young Buddha is content, and so am I."
Sweetheart reads newspapers, and I...
...read & take notes from my current book.
This time it was Liz Steel's 5-Minute Sketching: Architecture.
I love her books, her blog, her site, her videos.
 And she gives online lessons. 
Click Here.

Do you have a daily/weekly/monthly ritual that brings you Joy?

Monday, February 12, 2018

Paper Dolls Made Themselves


Drawing/Playing without observation & references. 

Paper Dolls Working Out!
I'm fascinated by the different dance & Zumba moves
in classes at the local gym!

These girls seemed to create themselves 
while I was chatting with my knitter friend.
She knit (ed?), I doodled. 
Who is this little person? YOU tell me!

PS. I am still replying to comments. See last post...

Monday, February 5, 2018

Sketching: From Observation. From Imagination

 Drawing with the group at a local "Antique Mall."
Because we are an official group, we get to go to
many fascinating places! 
(one of us always gets permission beforehand.)

My visual challenges were about  proportion, perspective, & relationships between objects.
Some others in the group focused on individual object studies. 
I'd like to do that too, studies with more depth & detail,
but for now I'm attracted to the interplays. 
There were many "nooks" with displays by individual vendors.
With so many objects to view in any given spot, 
the items were intriguing for themselves
(an antiquer or cultural historian would have a blast!)
 as well as for their
 lines, forms, angles, placements.  
 
Recently I've started to practice a new type of drawing:
From Imagination! 
A new Journaling group at a local library, 
based on cartoonist Lynda Barry's teachings in her book, Syllabus
is opening new channels in my brain.
Above, The beginnings of a "Self Portrait."

In my usual way, I take notes from the book. 
But I sprinkle these with my own memory/imagination
 drawings & writing. Syllabus is really a workbook. 

I was taught at a (too young) age to draw ONLY from observation. 
I don't know if drawing from imagination was ever a strength anyway, 
but what there was got squashed. 
Barry deals with the fear adults have of drawing from memory. 
She aims to "bring drawing back into people's lives"
(from their childhoods as most kids love to draw & then stop),
instead of "to teach drawing" to adults.

Stay tuned: Sketchbook Wandering: The Cartoon!