Sketchbook

Here are sample pages from my sketchbook:

 At Easter, I spent some time in the Heard Museum in Prescott,  USA. I used to be a potter and studied pottery in many museums, but this is the best collection of American Native Art that I have ever seen. I mostly took photos, but for some details the sketchbook is the best.

A sample of women's heads sketched for 'the unlikely gardener'. To get a face from different angles, I chose a character from TV that looked like her, recorded it and stopped the film.

Trying to keep sketching often -  these were done on a plane

Working on an idea for a frog who looks a bit like a man (working for children)

Practicing with different pens

My tutor advised me to pay attention to the letters that are part of an image, so I did some work about this

Here I noticed that the woman's face was covering a bit of the text, I have used this in my illustrations for packaging (Dino biscuits)  

I picked up some interesting books' covers from the library, studied the letters with the images, and traced some.

This is an example of larger size sketches/drawings that I made earlier in the course. I wanted to use charcoal for atmosphere and showing light and shade, so I tried working on brown paper on the floor.

Here are examples of what a page in my sketchbook looks like these days:

This page is full of drawings, a tracing stuck on (swing), some text printed, photocopied, cut and stuck. All of these relate to the 'seven days' project that I had been working on. It also shows ways that I've found to go round my problems with technology (computer software like paint and pixlr that I haven't mastered enough, printer, camera, phone camera, etc. at war with each other like The Housewives of Orange County, ...)

 This page if full of tiny examples of frogs on bikes found on the internet. I print them, cut them and glue them. It seems very long-winded, but it works for me, and I'm happy doing it!

I have the same sort of thing in another book for images I like, and that I can go back to, but have nothing to do with current projects or ideas.

 Here apart from a sketch of a frog (I was interested by its face), I found two images in the ZSL magazine that I found interesting. Drawing and painting them is a way to understand better what I was interested in, in particular. I wanted to see how people had stylised a tiger on two objects. The paper finger puppet has less details (number of small details) and a smiley face - for children. The other one was painted on a maracas, with other things painted around it. It's probably a jaguar, more fierce with teeth and claws. Maybe a venerated ritual kind of image that has found its way on an object for tourists. Here it is decorative. So two objects with same colours, stylised, with different audiences. 

Someone who saw me painting in the orange from my watercolour box was amazed at how small I like to paint these (A5 Sketchbook). It's mainly for quickness really.