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Another page filled in the sketchbook from antaresnox. I'm trying to draw something fast every day. The forsythia is in front of the house... And, of course, rhododendron is everywhere.



It's kind of fascinating: rhododendron is an invasive plant, and when I was a kid, people started to plant it in their gardens deliberately "because the bugs don't eat it". This used to be true, except, oh wait, these days they do... I suppose we're seeing some evolution in progress. XD

So, a few weeks ago, I received a wonderful handmade sketchbook from antaresnox, and I just (finally) got around to testing it!



Isn't it lovely? It's tiny (7x7 cm, which is a bit under 3x3'') and has colored pages in pink, yellow, green, and blue. YAY! I love drawing on colored paper!

( More pictures, including the art supplies, behind the cut! )

Here are proper scans of my first two sketches, fuchsia (on a pink page) and aconitum (on a blue page). I used fineliners (Staedtler in 0.1 and Faber castell PITT in M), markers (Faber Castell PITT pen B in sky blue, pink madder lake, and light phthalo green), and a white gel pen (Pentel).





I already adore this little book! :D

I don't have much time for drawing these days, but at least I have two new entries in my sketchbook, one from last Sunday and one from today! :)



Last Sunday, friends from work decided (relatively spontaneously) to take a trip to Hamburg, and, because I happen to live there, I met with them in the park. (Planten un Blomen, nicest source of interesting botany around here.) They also brought their art supplies! Well, they wanted to do some watercoloring, but that was rudely interrupted by a water show that got everyone (and, worse, everyone's paintings) wet. XD I was not actually productive, but the bench we sat on was surrounded by lovely yellow tulips, so at least I was able to fill a page with those.



Today's page is rhododendron with (not-very-friendly) guests! :) I was taking an afternoon walk with my boyfriend, and, as usual, he had to be very patient while I examined the local shrubbery. It's a year for maybugs: these huge beetles that appear every four years and eat everything green in sight. The one I drew here, on the bottom of the page, was able to finish the whole young rhododendron leaf while I was drawing. I was impressed! (Also, until today, I didn't know these things even eat rhododendron, which is not a native plant they'd be adapted to. They usually prefer beech mass destruction! But, apparently, they really just like anything and everything green...) The rhododendron was also being attacked by others, like the snail I also drew here. Poor rhododendron.

Help with identification? The incredible thing happened: unknown plants two days in a row. If anyone recognizes this thing, please SCREAM!

EDIT: This turned out to be Kerria japonica, thank you so much for the identification, mific!

I was pretty lazy today, art-wise, but while my boyfriend was standing in the kitchen, preparing dinner, I decided to take a little walk and take my sketchbook with me. Maybe I'd find something interesting? And, sure enough, someone in the neighborhood has a very pretty yellow flowering hedge. From afar, I thought, sure thing, that's going to be a Potentilla, how nice!, but when I came closer... Uh, what's that? The leaves are all wrong! (You can see how the leaves stood in the drawing below, I have reproduced one of the shoots of the hedge as accurately as was possible in the short time - about 40 minutes). But, we're still somewhere in the Rosaceae, aren't we?!?

Basically, I'm very confused. Actually, we are in the Rosaceae, so at least I was not totally off, botanically speaking?!?



On the art side of things, I'm quite happy with this page. This time, I didn't just take the same pens I used in my sketches from yesterday, but additionally used a grey marker (Faber Castell), and it's incredible, the difference a few shadows can make! Everything looks much more detailed, even when it isn't really. XD

...or: Textmarker Sketch From Hell. Posted mainly for yhlee's amusement.

This is one of my sketches for this mermaid ATC, and it has occurred to me that, yes, I posted a step-by-step of what I did on the finished piece, but nothing of the work that goes on the side, especially when it comes to planning that picture in the first place.



For this thingy to make any sense at all, you need to understand that, basically, there are two very different concepts of "sketch". One is simply a very fast drawing that is still somehow supposed to render an object. (I have posted such sketches for example here or here.) The other is... preparatory work for something that's happening on another piece of paper. And that's what we're looking at here.

Things you can observe from comparing this scribble excellent sketch to the actual mermaid painting:



- This artist clearly dislikes preparatory sketching and/or is pretty confident in her coloring skills. She's put the bare minimum of effort into a composition sketch that nevertheless contains most necessary compositorial information, and/or she belongs to the school of thought that too much detail in this kind of sketch distracts from and weakens the overall composition.
- Line dynamics. (Even with no detail at all, you'll notice that not much about mermaid or fish changed when you compare it to the finished picture.)
- Actually: some missing line dynamics. The stillness created by the curved-but-mostly-parallel water plants was clearly a later addition! (This artist likes to improvise. LOL)
- Areas of contrasting colors. (The fish in the finished mermaid painting are not just objects providing a "warm" color splash in front of a cool background - they're part of a whole wedge of warmer color.)
- Weird dark area in the upper right. (I also retained this in the finished painting: basically, I drew extra attention to the mermaid's face because I considered it important. Unfortunately, it wasn't going to be the lightest part of the picture - that was always going to be her tail - so I exaggerated the shadow in order to create a secondary focus point by value contrast there.)
- No shadow planning beyond the second-focal-point thing. From this, you can conclude that this artist is either hopelessly overconfident in her imagination of shadows or (more likely) did that in another sketch she already lost because it was also on a piece of crappy note paper that's already thrown out. XD
(- Corollary: this artist will be instantaneously kicked out of any serious art academy should she ever try to apply with this kind of sketch work. LOL)

Sooooo I received this lovely little sketchbook from yhlee. (Thank you sooooo much!!!) It's really tiny: 5x5cm (that's 2''x2''), blue, and it has watercolor paper. Niiiiice! It's just the kind of thing that makes me immediately want to start drawing! Also, the paper is so rough that I can't work with too much detail, which is an actual relief.





...but what to do with it? I decided to make it a personal thing and draw the characters from my own story/project/software/thingy (it's complicated LOL), Kolthainn. And while I haven't done any actual watercoloring yet, here's already the first five sketches! I just took a relatively broad ink pen and scribbled.





So, uh, what do we see here?
- Deeyan, of course, is working on her telescope. Not visible in the (bad) photo, but she's actually holding a screw-wrench, and I'm sure interesting things are going to happen to that telescope!
- Dev looks at some crystals rather sceptically. That's all right: I'd be sceptical, too. I just scribbled something without paying attention to symmetries or angles or anything, so these crystals are highly dubious! Dev, of course, knows enough about crystals to see everything that's wrong with them.
- Yora wins at chess. What else?
- Ruon is playing the lute. That's an instrument I wish I could play (I love the sound!) but I'll never be able to: my hands are too small. The neck of these lute thingies is really broad. Fortunately, Ruon doesn't have any problems like that.
- Koh does what he does best cuddles a cat. He does that sometimes. XD (I think I've mentioned how Koh pictures ended up involving cats? It stuck.) He may be a demon, but he's all cute and cuddly! Really! XD

...and there's 18 more pages to fill! And then I get to color everything! :D

This is FUN.

Fortunately, I woke up feeling a lot better today. :) I'm still a bit more tired than usual but otherwise okay. And my boyfriend had organized a piece of honeycomb (difficult to get around here) for my breakfast! (It's ridiculous just how much better this tastes than honey from a jar!) So, I'm having a perfectly nice, relaxed sunday, reading some papers and preparing some mail that's due to go out next week. I also did some online shopping (two bottles of ink, a new bag, and some stickers that I technically don't need but which looked nice) and I'm fussing around with the code of the most unnecessary piece of software ever whole sole purpose is the optimal allocation of favored ATCs to swap participants.





This was not involved in my breakfast, I promise. XD It's an entry from one of my sketchbooks (the one with grey paper, Hahnemühle The Grey Book) where I was simultaneously drinking and sketching my drink. (Bad habit. I think by now I have several sketchbooks full of alcoholic beverages collected over the last ten years or so - but at least this considerably slows down my drinking, so it's actually a good habit, right? Right.) When I sketch like this with markers, I don't pay any attention to tidiness (that's reserved for "real" artwork, not for sketching) but just try to get the light and shadow areas right. It's fun and relaxing and also a great excuse to make a drink last two hours while avoiding smalltalk with anyone who isn't an artist. (Last line of defense: sketchbook...)