Two pages on a new path

christinemlr · #1 07-13-2010, 03:16 PM

Hi to all the sketchbook/journal keepers here.
Having been away from this site for a long time, I've now discovered this forum and have been hugely enjoying all herein. The diversity is wonderful. I've tried a few times to keep to a visual journal, but I never consistently stick at it. This forum has led me to the 21 day sketch habit website and I started today, but I changed the 1st exercise to something that felt more right for me. Instead of a 'how I feel' page I made a 'revealing line page' and instead of picking out images in the doodles, I 'read' them and recreated imaginary scenes from them into another sketchbook. That way I get to keep the original 'revealing lines' (Another day they might reveal something else).

This is a completely new way of working for me. I've never drawn like this before so I'm very excited, because the most important thing for me right now is learning to work with and trust my imagination. I've always been hung up on technique and skill and frustrated by my lack of it. But whats the use of it without a personal vision? So this is what I want to develop in my new sketchbooks.

I won't bore you with pages and pages of my attempts on this journey, but I'm posting this to thank you all here for sharing your journal journeys and helping me on my road. If anyone finds this helpful too I will be so happy.

I want to make paintings from these, but I need to work out how to design them with tone and colour and I just don't know where to begin on that one. I suppose yet another sketchbook is needed!

Xina

**DrDebby** · #2 07-13-2010, 03:31 PM

Why another sketchbook? Unless you want to, of course. I think you could develop the drawings further on subsequent pages. These are great free form line drawings. Looking forward to seeing more.

jacquip · #3 07-13-2010, 07:30 PM

This is a very creative idea. I really like it, and I like what you have done so far. I agree with Debby you don't need to go to another sketchbook to develop them further, do that here and it will be a record of the full journey and would be great to see.

mhimeswc · #4 07-13-2010, 08:01 PM

Xina, I like that idea! I think some of them could definitely be worked up with tone and color, and if it were me, I would keep them in the same sketchbook, since they are a continuation of the same concept.

Jakesgram · #5 07-13-2010, 08:33 PM

Welcome Xina! I'm glad you decided to join the fun here. What a great idea you had to preserve the original "revealing lines" and perhaps be inspired by them again on another day. I sense a lot of emotion in the sketches that came from them. For some reason, the shapes and the rhythm remind me of Renoir.

Very nice start. Can't wait to see where you go with these and any others you decide to do.

Jean

christinemlr · #6 07-13-2010, 10:39 PM

Thank you Jean, Michelle, Jacqui and Debbie. Its lovely to get your positive responses.

The reason I need another sketchbook to continue developing these is because the paper in the spiral sketchbook is too thin and smooth to take anything but pencil. I'm thinking of trying gouache or pastel to work out possibilities. I'm interested in your comment about Renoir Jean, I love Renoir, but never thought my work had any relationship to his style, but I do see it here now that you pointed to it.

But I just have to share this strange thing. This evening I got a phone call from my daughter anouncing she is pregnant. This was totally unexpected because she and her partner never expressed their desire for a baby. They are both thrilled. It was only later that it struck me that my 'revealing lines' had connected to this!! Here is the list of 'discoveries' that I wrote on the facing page.

So from the list I chose to draw:-

1. figures in a park - child in buggy, mother figure and distracted youth with an additional male. The youth became a young female. So this drawing has turned out to be a visioning of my daughters future family because her partner has a young teenage daughter.

3. crowd of figures - became just the two figures, a couple with a baby.

and the one I didn't draw but saw it and wrote down, number 6. - embryo/unborn.

I'm pretty startled at this. Keep this up and I could start fortune telling!

So now I'm even more motivated to develop these into paintings, and include the unborn one too.

I'm up late tonight. Too wide awake to sleep.

Xina

**Yorky** · #7 07-14-2010, 03:55 AM

Quote:

I'm pretty startled at this. Keep this up and I could start fortune telling!

Doug

robertsloan2 · #8 07-14-2010, 06:20 AM

Congratulations! Your first day drawings are great and that's so cool you wound up predicting their pregnancy announcement.

I'm also relieved to find someone else that didn't like the "how I feel" aspect of that exercise. I blocked completely on it and did something else for the first day because of that theme.

Paying attention to how I feel is the last thing I want to do. That's not a good idea for anyone with chronic pain -- life, art and everything else go lots better if I don't pay attention to how I feel. Sometimes when pay more attention to what I'm doing and who's around me, I can work around it.

**Vivien Maloney** · #9 07-14-2010, 08:03 AM

This is a great idea and your doodles and subsequent sketches are very creative and yes, it would be good to take them further into a painting. Your story about the pregnancy is very interesting and would make you feel as it you had some extra-sensory knowledge. Real life is often so much more amazing than imagination! I have looked at the Sketch a day" site but as yet haven't joined in but I like the idea. I'll follow this Sketchbook/Journal with interest. Thanks for posting.

christinemlr · #10 07-14-2010, 09:50 AM

Thank you Robert and Viv.
Robert I, of course, have looked at your journals here which just stagger me, and I was suprised you wanted to do the 21 sketch habit because of all people you're the one that doesn't need it. You are a sketchbook superhero as far as I'm concerned. But then again you are so interested in everything,(part of you must be a cat because your curiosity and desire to investigate is so strong) that maybe its not so suprising. Tonight when all chores are done I'll come back to look at your journals again. They're so great.

Well I wasn't going to post any more of my 21 days, but changed my mind. I want to see if 21 days will really establish the habit, and this thread could be a sort of journal of my experience of it.

Today although tired after very little sleep I was looking forward to Day 2. But I spent AGES on it. Looking through magazines, choosing my little rectangles, trying to decide where to stick them on the page. I really do make mountains out of molehills - nothing like the video demonstration where she just whizzes through the exercise in a matter of minutes.

I have a handful of random colours of polychromas pencil crayons so decided to use what I had and see how it turned out.

When doing this I felt completely lost, and was wondering if I was wasting my time. However now its done I regard it at as an extremely useful exercise, and will definitely be doing more of these. This is the kind of work I NEED to do no matter how lost and uncomfortable I feel. I have to learn to accept failed experiments and let them go - its only a page in a book! Probably the main reason why I never got the sketch habit is my just wanting all the pages to be good stuff. How silly.

I turned it horizontal as this is my preferred view of it. This kind of work is so great for getting the imagination working. Again I can see subject matter for paintings. I always thought I didn't have much of an imagination, but maybe the power of imagination is like a muscle that just has to be used to get strong. And probably lack of confidence makes it shrink or prevents it finding its power. Hey aren't sketchbooks/journals great!!!

Xina

Jakesgram · #11 07-14-2010, 11:31 AM

Wow! Xina, it is so fantastic that your first exercise ends up having so much personal meaning! Congratulations on the grandbaby. You must just be thrilled.

I love the way your collage extension turned out. The lines and colors are so delicate and so cohesive. And I definitely relate to your comments about thinking you don't have much imagination. I have always been frustrated in my work that I can reproduce almost anything that I see in a photo and sometimes in real life, but I have trouble dreaming up an idea and then calling an image out of imagination or memory or whatever. The sketchbook exercises (even the ones I DON'T like and DON'T want to do are helping me to see the value of just playing around. It's not always the finished product of the exercise that's most important, it's how the exercise might inspire future work.

Anyway, I hope you do continue to share the exercises from the Sketching Habit project. I think it is great to see how each person approaches them differently.

Jean

**DrDebby** · #12 07-14-2010, 01:38 PM

We don't have to be prisoners of our 5 senses. Just because "science" hasn't figured out we have other ways of gaining information doesn't mean we can't. LOL Congrats on the new baby in the family.

If you take those sketches further, we'd like to see where you go with them.

Interesting use of color on the collage elements.

mhimeswc · #13 07-14-2010, 04:30 PM

Congratulations, Grandma to be! Funny and interesting that your doodle sketches predicted the pregnancy.

I like your collage extension sketch also. I had trouble with this one until I decided to make animals out of mine. My mind just doesn't think in abstract. LOL

virgo68 · #14 07-15-2010, 12:46 AM

Hi Xina! I think the fact you are having a go is better than just sitting about thinking about it, and any drawing/creative output is a step in the right direction. I too am struggling with the concept of perfect drawings or a perfect journal but this is a great forum for learning and watching others' work and thinking about new ways of working. Look forward to seeing more......!

christinemlr · #15 07-15-2010, 02:53 PM

I didn't want to do todays 'project'. Just the thought of it made me feel oh no, boring, but as I was unable to come up with anything else to do I did it as its not such a taxing one. Also its been a very busy and rushed day for me, so the first chance of half an hour got me sitting down with the pens and pencil, some music and then I got lost in lines.

In terms of what I came up with I don't feel I achieved much, but what I DID achieve was the most important thing. I found that space of time to get pencil and pens to paper, I made it a priority like cleaning the cat tray! I have to do THAT every day and I don't enjoy it, but its a priority, so from now on the sketchbook is going to be as well. I ended up taking a bit more than half an hour to do these rectangles of lines, but how often have I said to myself, oh I've only got half an hour, not enough time to do anything really. Even though I know a few lines can be done in less than 5 minutes. I let lack of time be an excuse. And if I really do have only 5 mins then just drawing one of these nifty little rectangles with lines might just spark a great new art idea.

Well I've now got 3 completed pages in my sketchbook, so my thread title is completely erroneous. I don't know if its possible to add more words to it so it makes sense.

This sketchbook is a nice one, it was a one off, I was sent the wrong one in my order but I decided to keep it. It says it is 'all media cartridge paper' and has 'extra wet strength' I'm not quite sure what that means, but I think it might take paint. Although its not thin paper, the pen marks can be seen slightly on the reverse side, but they haven't bled through.

I love sketch books. I have loads - but very few completed. Some of them I've torn out so many pages theres barely a sketchbook left! Now I'm going to make myself a promise that this sketchbook will be FILLED with daily entries and NO pages torn out. If I really can't bear to look at some horror I could stick something over it, or gesso it maybe -I've never done that.

Xina

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