Friday, June 14, 2013

The Art of a Sketchbook - Friday


Its all about the egg .....



This week I noticed I have used eggs a number of times in my sketchbooks.   The sketches above are all in colored pencil.



In this second photo I used pastel for the top egg and charcoal for the bottom egg. Both the top sketch and this one came from the same sketchbook.


I've owned this sketchbook awhile ... on the first page I wrote the date January 8th 1997. The front cover is grey and it tells me its 11 x 8 1/2 Mead Academie Sketch Diary.  "An extremely durable, heavyweight (80#) sketching paper designed for versatile use indoors or out. For pencil, ink, pastel, color markers, and watercolor. Bound with a heavy paperboard backing for support and safekeeping.  70 sheets."

This sketchbook seems to be able to handle it all.  I have used all the different medium listed above and the paper seems to handle it fine.



Eggs sitting on a white plate sketched in pencil.  Seeing all these eggs and reading that it took me two hours I wonder if these were hard boiled ?

This sketch is from another larger size book.  Black cover hard bound.  There is no information about the paper weight written in the book but looking at different sketchbooks I think it may be one I bought in a variety store.  All purpose sketchbook with about a 70# paper.  Just a little different paper from the first one ... This one seems just a little smoother



This sketch is a pencil sketch ... and if I remember correctly I was using a magazine photo as my   reference.

This egg sketch is from my 9" x 6" Aquabee Super Deluxe that has 60 pages.  I like the size of this book, but I didn't think it took to the watercolor as well as I had expected, anyway not as well as the grey covered spiral bound book did.

My taste has changed over the years.  Now my favorite paper to sketch on is the very smooth paper such as printer paper, the pencil just glides over it.  I think its yummy.

The above photo shows the three sketchbooks that the eggs came out of ....

4 comments:

  1. I love your sketchbooks and it always encourages me to sketch more. sketching eggs is a brilliant idea!

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  2. Lovely, lovely drawings!
    Eggs are wonderful models.

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  3. Thanks for that, Nancy. I love the way you varied the "whites" of your eggs (ha,ha). Well, you know what I mean.

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  4. I have tried a variety of sketchbooks over the years and have settled on the Aquabee 9" square book. Seems to take the ink and watercolor I throw on the pages with minimum warping and the pages are thick enough that the pen doesn't bleed through to the next page.

    Years ago, a friend was rapturous about paintings of eggs by Sally Strand. I kept thinking, "Really? How can eggs be so exciting?" That was until I saw the paintings. Eggs are a GREAT subject. Your sketches are a delight!

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