Sketch Guru

My friend Jo told me about the Sketch Guru app. You can draw some pretty nice things with it.  The tools are intuitive and flexible.

When I'm killing time in the waiting room or on a plane I make pictures to entertain myself. My phone (Samsung Galaxy Note 2) has a stylus so it's easier to control the drawing than if you had to use your finger.

You can draw a realistic things (This guy was in the in flight magazine)...

Or just make simple designs from inside your head ...

You can also schetch ideas for your next project. This funny face may become a new series of beads.

Virtual Paintout: Breckenridge Colorado..."Slopeview!"

Now you can see it before you ski it! Google Streetview has actually recorded a few ski slopes so Bill Guffey of Virtual Paintout sent his fans out into the snow-covered mountains this month. While downtown Breckenridge looks charming, I thought the novelty of the view on the slopes was too good to pass up. I found these snowboard boys chillin at the top of a hill.

 This pic will do double duty in my Art House Coop Sketchbook...due in just over a week!

Sketchbook: Getting there

Been working and re-working pages in my Arthouse Coop sketchbook. My last one was all black and white ink sketches so I'm making this one in color for variety.
(January 7 comment: Jenny B asked what I used to color these. The ladies were first sketched with pretty pastel fine-tip markers, then inked with a black gel pen, and finished off with colored pencils.)

When I was in elementary school and Junior High in the '70s I wanted to be a fashion illustrator. My grandmother was quite a seamstress and I would go to the Piece Goods store with her when she went shopping for new patterns and fabrics. When I started sewing in 8th grade, I realized how much more useful it was to see the clothing on an actual person. Every outfit in the pattern book looked good on a super skinny watercolor-and-ink lady with legs that were 3/4 of her height! After that I just drew fashion photos from Grandmother's "Harper's Bazaar" and my "Seventeen" -- hairstyles and clothing for fun and practice, I decided being a fashion illustrator had limited utility.

Above and below are more detailed and colorful examples of what I do
while listening to a conference call or staff meeting.

I try to encourage my mom to draw. She'll say, "I don't have anything to draw" and I tell her it doesn't matter what it is, just draw whatever is in front of you.

You can see this one before I added color. Maybe it was better before....oh well, too late now!

Sketchbook 2012: due soon, not nearly finished!

I just realized how close the deadline is and of course my sketchbook is not nearly finished. Here are a few new pages. These are fancier versions of my usual doodles I make during meetings.

Sketchbook 2012: Lame so far

My new sketchbook progress is not going so well. I will definitely have to do new pictures and paste them over some of the pages. I only have three decent pages out of 10 or so. Here are the three that aren't ashamed to show their faces in public...

Artist: Adebanji Alade

In honor of the sketch crawl I was going to participate in today but decided I didn't want to drive an hour both ways in the snow to get there, you can look at these incredible sketches from Adebanji Alade. Just looking at these makes me want to practice, practice, practice so I could try to become a tiny fraction as good as he is. 
He offers many tips for anyone who wants to sketch people you run across in your daily travels...subway, coffee shop, wherever.
Check out this sketch that he turned into a color mixed-media piece. Look at the green on the brim of the hat. Gorgeous!

Sketchbook: Fantastic book by Joseph, aka yard_ape

If you want to see a super sketchbook, check out all of Joseph's pictures from his "friends of friends" themed book.

Sketchbook: Finished!

I mailed my sketchbook off to Art House on Thursday and it was supposed to arrive today. There were still a few blank pages but it is finished, such as it is! I posted more images to my Art House page.

Sketchbook: Candy Wrappers

I should be drawing instead of adding to my blog!
I'm a bit behind schedule on my book!

Sketchbook: Farm Window

This is the view out of my mom's living room window. At the time I started my drawing there were only three cows out there. But later in the day, my stepdad went out to feed them and they came en masse over the hill. See the photo...

Sketchboook: Running Shoes

I took the sketchbook home with me over the Thanksgiving holiday. Still 21 pages left to fill!

Sketchbook: Nova Scotia (Virtual Paintout double-duty)

From Leslie Hawes' blog (she makes lovely colored pencil drawings) I learned of the Virtual Paintout. Bill Guffey chooses a location somewhere in the world and participants use Google Maps Streetview to find a scene to render in pencil, paint, ink, or whatever it is they do. FUN! This drawing is doing double-duty as part of my Arthouse Co-op Sketchbook project also. The water part of this picture isn't too good but that's what a sketchbook is for. Practice!

Sketchbook: Kambug

My kitty Kambug wouldn't sit still for me so I just kept sketching him!

Sketchbook: Tree Roots

Rob and I went to the Kettle Creek Lodge in central PA on Saturday. It is a nice fishing lodge and we had the place to ourselves because a big party had just left that morning. I sanded beads, then Rob killed me at Scrabble while we had a bottle of wine. The next day he fished; I sketched.

Read the story of the sketch: http://www.arthousecoop.com/users/artybecca/portfolio/67487

Sketchbook: Win the lottery!

The latest sketchbook page...

Sketchbook: Excercise more!

This is my t-shirt from the race last weekend. Twice in recent years I was in good enough shape to run the whole three miles but this year I couldn't get myself to train regularly so I walked it (with Rob who made us walk very fast!)
This drawing reminds me of the illustrations from the book "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" by Roald Dahl. I loved that book when I was little.

Sketchbook: Fold the laundry!

I've been working diligently on my Sketchbook Project pages. My theme is "A Million Little...Things I Should Do But Don't." (For more details about the project, see the post below this one.)
I will be figuratively airing some of my dirty laundry in the sketchbook, but I think many of the pages will relate to actual laundry, such as this one...

Sketchbook Project

I signed up for the Sketchbook project and received my sketchbook last week.
The theme assigned to me was "a million little..." and I've decided to finish that statement with "...things I should do but don't."
The first sketch I did was of my book club book that I have barely started reading yet. Instead of reading it last night, I drew a picture of it. (That's why I hardly ever make it all the way through the books...I end up working on a creative project instead.)
Rob and I went to dinner tonight so I drew the condiments on our table. I love salt and should probably eat less of it so that was the subject matter du jour.