little black journal

Indeed – the return of the weekly sketch!  I’ve been off-track for a few months now, but I’m back – doodling, cutting and pasting, and, most notably, painting.  I have pulled out my crusty old watercolor set and am having a lot of fun re-exploring this medium.  I like the drippy, spotty texture of watercolor, especially paired with straight, fine graphite lines.  And hot damn, it feels good to be art-ing again.

spotlight (2011.12.20):

canyon tracks (2012.01.09):

pebble beach (2012.01.12):

drop-off (2012.01.17):

Still snipping up bits of colored transparencies, putting pencil to paper, finding inspiration in buildings and brick and strings of power lines…

canyon (2011.01.12):

bridges (2011.01.15):

letterbox house (2011.01.24):

amtrak (2011.01.30):

Switchin’ it up – some plain old pencil on paper, since I recently rediscovered how much I like the tone and ‘smudginess’ of graphite.  Also loving sticky-back printable transparencies – my new favorite way to incorporate my photos into my drawings.

cabin in the woods (2010.12.05):

section in winter (2011.01.02):

jardin des plantes (2011.01.06):

inspired by ‘smooth building‘ (2011.01.09):

Still loving the mix of painting, collage, and drawing.  Inspired by architecture these days – planes, angles, corners, set against a backdrop of color…

pepto sky (2010.10.17):

green glass (2010.10.22):

rambler (2010.11.15):

mod house (2010.11.17):

Back into painting, squeezing globs of nearly-dried-out acrylic paint onto my palette, mixing these colors with a little bit of collage, a little bit of drawing, a little bit of a mess…

lit up (2010.09.28):

bubbles (2010.10.04):

island (2010.10.09):

gridlock (2010.10.13):

Yes – after a multi-month hiatus, I’m back into the groove of my weekly sketches.  Playing a lot with collages, spending my evenings with magazine clippings and a bottle of Elmer’s.  It’s fun.

green (2010.09.05):

tedium (2010.09.11):

west elm topos (2010.09.14):

volver (2010.09.16):

desert (2010.09.17):

I’ve been spending a lot of time flipping through furniture catalogs lately, tempting myself with plenty of stuff that we really don’t need.  So rather than buy the items on those dog-eared pages…Voila.

chair (2010.05.12):

sofa (2010.05.16):

table (2010.05.22):

I’m taking a break from the weekly sketches for the next few weeks, but only so that I can focus on some other art projects.  So stay tuned!

Been playing around with stuff that’s a little more abstract, messier, free-er, looser.  This style is not my forte, but it’s been fun.  And it’s nice to switch out my pen for a paintbrush now and then…

meteor (2010.03.28) – torn paper, watercolor, and thread:

hexy (2010.04.11) – acrylic paint over lace stencil, cut paper:

flip side (2010.04.12) – cut paper, acrylic paint, thread:

featherweight (2010.05.05) – torn paper, acrylic paint, and ink:

A few more pretty little drawing/collages, and now I’m ready to move on to something else.  These have been fun, and it’s nice to have a group of pieces that comprise a sort of ‘series’, but they’re feeling a little cute-sy (case in point: see butterfly below), so for the next few sketches, look for something messier, free-er, and more abstract – might be time to time to pull out the fat sticks of charcoal and crack open my globby tubes of paint.

dragonfly (2010.03.04):

pomegranate (2010.03.07):

papillon (2010.03.09):

cardoon (2010.03.12):

A few pretty little collage/drawings, inspired by nature-y stuff…  I like the garlic one.

leaf (2010.02.01):

garlic (2010.02.01):

ginkgos (2010.02.05):

citrus (2010.02.10):