31 December, 2022.

One constant for me in 2022 has been to experiment, to try new ways of sketching, and to try not to grow too comfortable with any one thing in particular. Reflecting upon those ideas, I was a little surprised to tally up the number of different types of sketchbook I used this past year. This first is a larger format Stillman and Birn Alpha. These are bound with a very heavy paper between a sturdy front and back cover, and the surface is excellent for drawing with pens. I’ve got a love/hate relationship with the size of this particular book – I like the extra real estate, but it’s a pain to carry around with me. Notice that I always date the cover for when I begin to draw in Stillman and Birn book. Usually, I wrap one up fairly quickly, but this one was started just as Covid kicked in and it got shelved until this past Spring!

It’s not bad for adding watercolor wash, but not my favorite for that media either, which is why I often build watercolor sketchbooks out of my favorite paper.

In this example I’ve used Arches 140 lb. watercolor paper in a much easier to carry size. Watercolor is not my “go to” sketching media, and to be quite frank I have to be in the mood to be using it the way this paper demands.

That means a stationary and (hopefully!) comfortable seat where I can sketch in a more painterly approach. I really don’t do this sort of thing a lot. Fact of the matter is that a sketch may accidentally turn out like these examples have, and I’ll get excited about them. “Hey! I could be a watercolorist,” I’ll think to myself. But it’s not really in my temperament to sit and wait so patiently between glazes of color. The pages in this journal, in fact, only came easily because the island sun of Sint Maarten dried the paint very quickly.

More aligned with my needs and level of patience is this medium-sized Fabriano sketchbook. The pages are bright white and very lightweight, and work great with my favorite pens and markers.

Watercolor washes are possible, as long as you’re content with a kind of “quick dry” appearance. I am, and it merges well with my desire to sketch quickly and – often – very loosely. As I watched the Tour de France this summer, it was important to me to capture gesture more than detail.

I purchased several of those Fabriano sketchbooks, but I think they’ve been discontinued. In any event, my preferred sketchbook for pens continues to be this size Canson 180. I love the paper, I love the binding, and I love how my pen points glide across the surface.

Bottom line is that this book allows me to work the way I choose to: quickly, loosely, directly. Until something better comes along for my Uni-Ball Vision and fountain pens, this will always be my favorite combination of size and surface.

I’ve been enjoying working with dip pens again this year, and 100 lb. Bristol Board is an excellent quality surface that takes pen nibs well. It’s durable enough to easily erase pencil lines from a construction drawing without marring the paper surface. And it’s also easy to cut a stack of sheets and take them to the local Office Max to be bound into a custom sketchbook, as I’ve done with this book.

This is another smaller sized handmade sketchbook I put together in a square-ish format. I relied on the folks at Office Max to plastic coil bind the covers (made from illustration board) and a stack of heavy watercolor paper cut from Arches 140 lb. cold press.

Although I made a couple of watercolor paintings (left) in this booklet, it was mostly executed in gouache (right). I’ve mentioned my impatience already, so there’s that. Gouache has long held a fascination for me, but I can’t find myself working with it exclusively or for long periods of time. Essentially, I’ll get the hankering to paint in gouache. I’ll make several studies or paintings, and then grow bored and put the kit away for several months before picking up the tubes again. That would largely explain why this booklet exemplifies two flurries of interest over several pages each, but remains incomplete as of this writing. Perhaps I’ll finish it in 2023.

The surprise sketchbook for me was this tiny Moleskin Cahiers unlined journal. I have a stack of them that I never really found useful. They’ve sat stacked on a bookshelf for years – in fact, I had to brush dust off the top book when I picked through the pile before traveling this summer. “Hmm,” I thought to myself. “One of these would carry easily in a shirt pocket.” It’s something I’ve told myself countless times over the years, only to discover the booklet had gone largely unused.

There was a difference this time though, and that was my choice to carry a Blackwing pencil. I usually work with a pen in my sketchbooks, directly and seldom relying upon a pencil underdrawing. A pencil and this little sketchbook were perfect companions while hiking and moving about in tropical climes, and have continued to be very useful in the months here at home. In fact, I’ve found myself relying on this little kit more often than even my Canson 180 kit – which is really saying something, considering how much I like that combination of book and pen.

Predictions for 2023: I’m always looking to simplify kit and approach. A Canson 180 book and a Uni-Ball Vision pen come naturally to me, and will continue to be tools of choice. From time to time I might even hit a few of those pages with light washes of watercolor. The Moleskin Cahiers and pencil is also a simple kit, and I enjoy working with shapes and composition and studies of value. That kit, too, will remain on the table next to my armchair, an easy kit to grab on the way out the door. Lastly, I’m enjoying dip pen immensely. Look for a lot more sketching in India ink on this blog in the coming months.

It’s been fun this past year, and surprisingly productive as I reflect on the volume of sketches, drawings, and paintings completed. I’ve filled dozens of books, and begun several new ones. I’ve rediscovered old joys – pen and ink was the very first media I explored on my own as a pre-teen – and learned new techniques. I’m looking forward to 2023.

30 December, 2022.

About a month ago, we stayed in a purportedly haunted inn for our anniversary. Until a couple of days ago, I wasn’t certain how to share this tale with others. This is, I swear, a true story.

27 December, 2022.

I don’t do a lot of sketching in color, mostly because I feel very comfortable using lines expressively, and shapes to define shadows and values. Most of what I want to communicate takes place through line, shape, and value.

But not always.

I’d no sooner made this drawing than I began to imagine what it would be like with color added. Immediately, I could picture this with cool violets and grays throughout most of the scene, with the foreground figures sharply contrasting through warm color. A high quality print of the drawing was made on 100# Bristol, a substrate I’ve employed more regularly lately. I like how dip pen and India ink play with the surface; watercolor and Neocolor II water-soluble crayons wind up looking like an editorial cartoon illustration. It’s an aesthetic that appeals to me.

In this instance, a print was hand-colored with watercolor, and I was excited at how the scene came to life with the loose washes.

I finished the color version and left it on to dry on my drawing table for several days, because I enjoy looking at it. The final version reminds me a little of mid-century New Yorker illustrations, so I squandered a few happy hours looking up and basking in the work of Ronald Searle and Charles Addams.

There are a few editorial projects on my table at the moment, one of which is going to require a few months of scripting and prep before I’ll be able to begin serious drawing. My Happy Hour sketch comes at an especially opportune time during the holiday semester break and just prior to digging into those projects.

20 December, 2022

…to draw without erasing. I once began a sketchbook entirely devoted to celebrating imperfection. The idea was to start every page with the fat, juicy line of a fude-nib fountain pen and just draw, without worrying about making the “right” mark. A funny thing happened. Those early pages often exhibit crude marks and proportions that are out of whack, but also have an energy that’s hard to purposefully replicate. As I added pages, always following the “rule” I’d set for that sketchbook – to draw directly in blobby ink, and to not rely on any pencil construction drawing – I found my eye improved. My internal editor more easily weeded out unimportant details, and the drawings got better and more interesting. They also became more refined, and the entire reason for staring that sketchbook – imperfection – evaporated. That sketchbook remains unfinished, perhaps waiting for a day that I’m able to recapture some of the charm of a spontaneously drawn line.

Line always interests me most of all the elements of drawing. Line – accurate or exaggerated or merely out of proportion – determines what happens with shapes in a drawing. With regular practice, sketched lines become more confident and purposeful.

That’s not to say that confident lines are necessarily more accurate, but that they feel less hesitant. Most of my students make drawings where the lines are made in short back-and-forth motions. It takes a lot of pushing and resolve to get to a point where those lines simply start at “Point A” and are confidently drawn to “Point B,” without hesitation, without over-caution.

And so it is that I try to draw without erasing. I won’t add “ever,” because that’s not true or even remotely necessary. This is my personal challenge to always be in search of more immediate, more confident marks on paper.

17 December, 2022.

I drive past an old truck and I have great difficulty refraining from turning around and going back for a second look. These old things, little as I actually know about any of them, simply interest me – I guess – maybe – in some similar way that old houses also intrigue me. There’s a degree of functionality ever present in an old pickup truck, and very little in the way of aerodynamic design that is visually apparent. They’re boxy overall, often with curves in places that don’t always make much sense.

I have an appreciation for the swooping lines and sexy curves present in sports cars of a certain era, the forties and fifties in particular. Art Deco design really grabs me, too. These things make me want to preserve them, as if I’m a curator of some sort.

Not so much an old pickup truck, though. They make me want to hop in on a cold morning and sip a cup of hot chocolate while I warm up the engine and the cab, the cold bench seat warming at a slightly different pace than my blue jeaned butt. I’d check the fuel gauge, perhaps tapping it to make sure the needle had moved all the way, and meander out of town to a gravel road, there to wander and explore. The dog is on the seat beside me, her tongue lolling and a happy, satisfied look in her eyes as she watches intently everything that we pass along the way. I want to use and drive these old vehicles, to haul art supplies between schools, to carry my bike out to someplace I’ve never ridden before, to go fly fishing, and maybe even to draw an old farm house or two or three.

7 December, 2022.

The World of Urban Sketching, by Stephanie Bower, was released in North America last week. I am honored to be one of the approximately 150 sketchers selected from around the globe to represent Urban Sketchers in this massive book. I’ve been looking forward to the publication for quite a while now – Stephanie had clearly made this a labor of love – and each time she “teased” out a page or two I was even more ready to see the whole book.

But man! I wasn’t actually prepared for the “whole” book! It’s the most complete tome I could ever have imagined on the subject of urban sketching. For one thing, I cannot even begin to imagine how anyone could research, collect, organize, and decide what to include in book representing hundreds and hundreds of thousands of sketchers whose interesest range from people to architecture to things to storytelling, and who are spread (quite literally) across all points of the globe. The Urban Sketchers movement is a phenomena, clearly, and it’s difficult to describe – let alone fathom – a single volume that can do it justice.

And Stephanie Bower has done exactly that. I’ve had the book in my possession for three full days now and am only just beginning to pierce the opening thoughts and examples. I am a voracious reader, but I anticipate months of going back and forth, drooling over the wonderful illustrations, reading and re-reading the motivations of different artists, and trying to parse what in the heck each has done using paint and pen and paper. Sketching is a shorthand form of visual communication; it’s unlike paintings that hang in galleries and more of a shortform illustration, visual storytelling. Every sketcher – and there are a BUNCH of them out there! – develops their own shorthand language, and it’s fascinating to study how each is communicating through this very democratic medium.

I think my copy cost about $27 on Amazon, and holy cats that is such a screamin’ bargain!

4 December, 2022.

The monthly gathering of Urban Sketchers yesterday took place at Crown Center, across from Hallmark corporate campus. The enormous Christmas tree is up at the skating rink, and the holiday decor hangs from every surface. I’d originally planned to sketch a difficult angle from an elevated position but I wanted something in the foreground to establish a sense of scale. Despite moving around and trying a variety of perspectives, I wasn’t able to nail down a point-of-view that I found interesting. Eventually, I wandered down to the food court and focused on a pattern of people moving in and out of view. The place was packed and there was no shortage of subject matter.