A New Class - Revisiting Basics

9B Pencil and Wash

Ink and One Colour Highlight

I've just started a 12 week online course by Australia's Liz Steel called Sketching Now. In the first lesson, she has us re-examining the materials in our kit and working on some basics. This assignment was to draw the same still life twice, once using pencil and a matching monochrome colour and ten again straight to pen with just one colour focal point. As much as I love colour and pen, I was surprised how much I enjoyed the smooth flow of a 9B pencil and the exciting dark shadows in paint. Quick, wonky, fun and satisfying.

Shrivelled Rose Hips

We have had a remarkably warm and dry fall this year. (I heard with horror that it snowed in Calgary today!) This morning,  I got up to the coziest yellow glow in the house as the sun shone on all of the brightly coloured leaves in my garden. The witch hazel stands directly in front of the kitchen window and casts an unearthly glow on our table. And the burning bush in the courtyard is as fluorescent red as it has ever been. And the big leaf maple leaves at the back are sailing down for their 5 seconds of freedom and glory.

My favourites continue to be the tree peony pods with their huge glossy black seeds and of course the rose hips, now all shrivelled and cratered. Originally they were a luminescent orangy red but now they have dipped into the deep purple red and, in places, almost black range.

A Small Diversion - North Shore Celtic Ensemble Concerts

The North Shore Celtic Ensemble has been a big part of our lives for the past number of years. My daughter has played her fiddle with the group since she was in grade 5. She is now in her final year and we are also celebrating the 15th anniversary of the NSCE with the launch or our new logo. The poster design is based on our new logo and we just love it.

If you are in this quadrant of the globe in late November, come to the concerts and help us celebrate this amazing group. 

Hope to see you there!

Inspiration Melanie Reim Style

Waiting in the ferry line in the rain.

I signed up for another unit of Danny Gregory and Koosje Koone's online Sketchbook Skool. The theme this time is storytelling. Each of the 6 instructors talks about and shows their style and take on this theme. This week's instructor was Melanie Reim, a New York artist/illustrator from the Fashion Institute of Technology. I found her crazy lines and flowing attitude to drawing very appealing. She is particularly interested in people, gesture and communicating stories in lively places where no one stands still! So in the spirit of line and people, I gave it a whirl. 

Brigit relaxes with a book by the fire.

Humans on the beach…..

….and surfers

Tree Peony Pods

I can see from the file where I keep the scans of my drawings that I am fairly obsessed with tree peony pods. I have lots of variations on this theme. It is something about those super shiny, grape sized black seeds emerging from the split in the pod that I find fascinating. At first, the pods are soft, fuzzy and green, but as they dry, they go through various colour changes, from green to yellow to red to brown and finally to a hard crusty black. I just love them.

Pssst! There's a Pinecone in Your Purse

I love pinecones. I pick them up where I see them. Sometimes my purse gets a bit lumpy. 

Part of a long, thin cone.

Practicing line work

It's all about etching really. An Urban Sketcher acquaintance of mine, Sigrid Albert, was recently involved in a cool, creative collaboration. She and poet, Christopher Levenson put Sigrid's etchings and Chris' poetry together in a book called Getting to Know You. They worked with master printer Peter Braune to produce a lovely, hand printed,  limited edition tribute to Vancouver. Check out Sigrids blog to get a taste of the book. http://www.urbansketcher.ca

As with all things creative, finding the money to do projects like this requires lots of creativity in and of itself. So the trio decided to crowd source the money through the website Indiegogo. (to great success - they raised $5000) The cool thing about this fundraiser was that, instead of just making a donation, you actually buy something, in my case, an etching session with Peter's printshop, New Leaf Creative Solutions.

Oh my gosh! Great idea, right?! Except now I have to be able to draw something worth printing, straight onto a metal plate! I pride myself on adding watercolour to make lovely my less than amazing drawings. As far as I can see, there is no watercolour involved in etching. The whole premise is that the drawing part is lovely from the start!

Do I sound panicky? All this to say, I am practicing with fine black pens. And yes, I am panicky…..and excited. 

Camp Mustard

Camp Mustard Buoy Pole 

Tent and Boots

We had an idyllic weekend camping trip to a beach on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Many of our tents and tarps coincidentally turned out to be mustard coloured (until ketchup red arrived).  Hence the name Camp Mustard. The beach was also scattered with many abandoned buoys. We erected a mustard buoy "flag" pole and had some fun playing beach buoy bocce with the hard black orbs. Some of them were enormous and took quit a lot of strength to hurl. We had a particularly fun and random round when the red buoy pallino ended up tossed in the waves at the edge of the beach. Rather hard to pin down who actually won that round.