The mighty sketchbook

Every artist understands the importance of having a sketchbook.  It is important to carry around for moments of immediate inspirations, and to draw the world around you.  To become a better artist, one must be able to draw their immediate surroundings. I love to fill pages in my sketchbook with doodles.  It's like doing yoga for your brain.  You concentrate on the line and let go of every other thought.  Soon you are drawing in a zen-like trance lost in the lines. 

But, as a high school art teacher, I know that my understanding of the importance of sketchbooks is not necessarily understood by my students.  Students who have an interest in drawing and painting love the sketchbook.  Students who have an open mind about drawing and painting, but feel they can't do either get excited at having one, but use it for tagging, or passing notes, or hardly use it.  Students who have no interest in drawing and painting have no interest in using a sketchbook.  They just want to have one because everyone else has one. 

My biggest problem is finding a sketchbook that is the right size for my students.  In the past, I've ordered sketchbooks with 100 pages and end up using only 30 pages.  I've also ordered sketchbooks with 30 pages and end up needing more pages.  It is very difficult to predict how much the sketchbook will be used during the school year.  Then, there is the financial side of the sketchbook. They eat up a huge chunk of my budget, so I've made the decision to not buy them for this year.  A very risky move.

As a department, we have discussed for a few years about making sketchbooks.  The conversation became more and more serious until last year when we finally made the decision to make it a class assignment.  So, as a way to welcome our newest teacher to our group, and figure out what technique is going to work best for us, we had a artist play date. We sat in my parents' backyard in the shade and began practicing our construction of sketchbooks.

I used cardboard pieces for the cover.  I wanted to play with melting crayons as a possible decoration of the cover.  I, also, thought it would be great to use fabric, or old shirts for the cover.  For the paper, I used xerox paper to make the signatures (stacks of 8 sheets of paper folded in half). In one, I used string to attach the signatures to the cardboard.  For the other, I used pipe cleaners to bind everything.  

They were a lot of fun to make.  I'm hoping that by making the sketchbooks my students will develop a new appreciation for them.  Perhaps, inspiring those who fear drawing and painting to jump in and draw.

 I enjoyed making the sketchbooks so much that I decided to make another one last night.  This could possibly become a new obsession of mine.  My favorite part is using fabric, cardboard, crayons, yarn, and random things I can find in my apartment. 

I'm looking forward to the school year starting so I can make these with my students.  I can only hope my students will love making them and want to use them as much as I do!

Sunday Agglomeration- Getting back into the groove

As we get closer to the end of the school year, I have been feeling very scattered.  But I have managed to find time to get back into my creative groove.  This past week I had to substitute during my prep period, which normally bothers me because subbing can be such a nuisance.  Students often feel that a substitute means they don't have to do any work.  But this time was not too bad because the students did their work and I was had time to do some drawing.  I'm continuing with the yoga theme.  It seems to be working for me.

This week I also began the Hero's Art Journey course.  Our first assignment was a self portrait.  I thought it would be easy, but it was a challenge.  I couldn't figure out how I wanted to portray myself.  I decided to play with melting crayons on a canvas.  As I was doing this, I thought it would make a great background for my portrait.  I took it with me to my illustrator's play date and worked on it.  Within a few hours I was pretty pleased with what I had.  There is still more that I want to add to it, but I like it so far.  As an option to our self portrait, we were told we could do a children's book illustration of a child version of ourselves.  I figured I should play with this as well.  Since I love trees, I drew a little girl reclining in a tree drawing on a clipboard.  I didn't have large trees around when I was a kid, but I always loved movies where kids would climb trees, or hang out in tree houses. It is definitely incomplete, but I feel like I've made great progress this week.  I'm not feeling as stuck or overwhelmed.

Nature Inspired

Saturday's artist play date really stuck with me this weekend.  One of my friends has an assignment for his architecture class where he needs to create an artwork from items found in nature.  I went with him to a park to find interesting branches and leaves.  During our hunt of curled branches I found these pieces of tree bark.  They were just so appealing I had to take them.  I plan on painting something on them.  Maybe I'll create mini portraits of my characters? I'll definitely post results.

 

To continue with the nature inspired theme, today's drawing is of Larry sculpting with branches.  He's made a heart with the branches in preparation for Valentine's day.

Weekend full of art

Yesterday, I met with my illustrators group for an artist's play date.  We brought various materials and began being creative.  It was so much fun to just play with materials.  I decided to use a piece of cardboard and collaged various torn pieces of paper.  For the girl, I used white gouache to create her silhouette and then used watercolor pencils on top.  I love the textures the paper created.  I have always been attracted to the edges of torn paper.  Something about it draws me to it. 

Today was busy with various chores, but I had another experience with the squirrel in my parent's back yard.  Her name is Striker and I went to feed her nuts.  I had set some on the tree and I held one in my hand for her to take.  But she came at it from a weird angle and knocked the nut out of my hand, so she kept taking the nuts I had set on the tree.  She would pretend to come get the nut from my hand, and then she would end up grabbing one on the tree.  I stood there in awe of how close she stayed near me.  She was the inspiration for today's drawing.

I even had time to do a quick watercolor version of one of my daily drawings.