A personal goal of mine is to have better sketchbook habits. At MICA I admired the sketchbooks of my peers. Mine on the other hand was more a notebook than anything else, with chicken scratch thumbnails.
So, in June I got this black sketchbook to experiment with. I chose it because starting off with white paper can be very intimidating.
I began to include paper cut art in my sketchbook as well. Different from a planned piece, the work in the sketchbook does not begin with preliminary drawings. I collage from scrap pieces of paper I have left over from previous projects and build the piece as I go.
I've always wanted to experiment with paint. I love how it looks as an accent to the paper. I'm finding however, that I can also work in the reverse and have the paper be the accent to the paint.
These early works have been created from my imagination. Since a sketchbook is meant to travel with you, I've started to take this little black book with me to Sketch Night at the Society of Illustrators and create works based on the costumed models.
With these sketches, I'm less concerned with trying to create a realistic or even accurate depiction of what I see but aim to create an interesting piece of work inspired from what I see.
The models' poses last for 5 or 10 minutes. It takes me about 20 minutes to finish one piece. Sometimes I capture bits and pieces of the pose from the previous moment.
The Society of Illustrators provides artists with folding trays to work on. I bring along a mini cutting mat measuring 8"x10", an x-acto knife and scissors, my travel gouache set and an extra-large ziplock bag with scrap pieces of paper.
