Sketchbook Exchange 2016 (part 6: Dull)

How do you draw a dull texture? I decided that Conté pencil fitted the bill... and then I abandoned the idea of texture somewhat...

This tale has a happy ending, courtesy of Roy Orbison and Wheatus...

Sketchbook Exchange 2016 (part 5: Shiny)

Shine on you crazy diamond and Venus in Furs (Shiny shiny, shiny boots of leather)
Graphitint, graphite and ink; Quink, white and silver Uniballs, carbon pencil and coloured pencils

Wine Glass Reflections
Oil pastel; Watercolour and white uniball

Sketchbook Exchange 2016 (part 4: Smooth)

I was delighted that a friend was able to fix the nib of this pen. It now writes (and draws) smoothly...

Acrylics applied with a knife. Smooth blades to keep Judge Dredd's chin stubble-free...

Banana from life.
Blender from Leeds (via a sketch I made on a weekend visit to my friend there)
Rest of the fruit from memory.
Glass of smoothie from imagination.

All drawn in Molotow markers, with indigo-fountain-pen-ink curvy lines

Sketchbook Exchange 2016 (part 3b - the other two)

The theme is Texture, the sub-theme is Rough.
I posted my copyright-minefield-averted on Thursday. Here are the rest of my Rough contributions.

In keeping with the hands-read-texture idea... a textured hand.
Drawn in carbon pencil.

I'm pretty useless with all these skincare accoutrements, but people still buy me them.
Now I know why - so that I can draw them!

I hardly ever use hog brushes; I find them too rough...

(The bottle brush is a ringer - it's not hog and it's not meant for painting with, although I'm sure someone somewhere has tried it. It occurs to me that it looks a bit like a big mascara wand. Shudder. I once tried drawing with mascara. It was not the easiest of cosmetics to apply to paper...)

Media, clockwise from 9 o'clock:
Graphitint pencils with water (applied using the depicted hog filbert) and a hint of Molotow;
Sailor Fude de Mannen (Japanese calligraphy pen) filled with indigo calligraphy ink;
Uniball and Molotow;
Rotring Artpen.

Sketchbook Exchange 2016 (part 3a)

The theme is still Texture, the sub-theme is Rough. The drawing in this post uses two of the pages that I have in this book; the circumstances surrounding it require a little more explanation than they might, and so I thought I'd post it on its own.

This two page spread borrows more than a little from popular culture. Copyrighted popular culture. So I wrote to the copyright holders...

And it was alright (it might have helped that I emphasised the not-for-profit element).

2000AD (owners of Judge Dredd, character) told me to include a long statement.
CBS Records (holders of the copyright to "Ruff Justice", 90's indie classic by Pop Will Eat Itself) told me to talk to Pop Will Eat Itself.
Pop Will Eat Itself said, thanks for telling us, here's how the credit should be.

Here's "Ruff Justice". Just so you know, if you didn't already. Warning: they swear a bit.

Sketchbook Exchange 2016 (part 2)

This was a tricky one. The theme is still texture; the sub-theme is meaning.

I started off by thinking about how we read texture - primarily through our hands.
So I drew my hands. Note that it's mostly my left hand...

This was the last page that I drew, but the second page in sequence.
It occurred to me that texture is often used in simile,
so I had a bit of fun with some common phrases.

My husband suggested this one to me. Sometime during my lifetime (and his), these textured paving slabs have started to appear on the footpaths. There are ridged ones (whose main purpose seems to be to redirect the wheel of your road bike; quite why they are used on cycle paths I do not know), and there are these bumpy ones (the bumps are "truncated domes") that indicate the best place to cross the road; the texture, of course, is primarily intended for people with impaired sight.
This image is based on a crossing place close to my home. I used heavy body white acrylic to give the page some bumps (not very convincing truncated domes) and drew over the textured page with Molotow marker pens and Uniballs, including some explanatory text.  

The last of my pages in this book is an extension of the "tactile paving" idea.
This time, one hope that the primary users of the textured surface are able to see, because it is a road and the cobbled rumble strip / road hump / sleeping policeman is supposed to be for the benefit of the motorist. The macro-texture is intended to be felt through the vehicles wheels and should encourage the driver to slow down. Again, I used heavy body acrylic for the texture - spreading it thickly to make the road hump and incising it with the knife. There's a cheeky hint of a song drawing that refers to the 59th Street Bridge Song. "Slow down, you're going too fast... "

Sketchbook Exchange 2016 (part 1)

Artists from West Berkshire and North Hampshire Open Studios have started their 2016 sketchbook project. This time, we made our own sketchbooks, concertina-style.

I wasn't enamoured of the floppy card cover. Having been assigned the theme/subtheme Textures/Grain, I decided to use some things with grain to replace the card...

3mm beech-faced plywood, carved, with leather. Held together with nuts and bolts from an I-can't-believe-it's-not-Meccano toy and annotated with Molotow marker pens

There are only four pages per artist in these books, so I crammed several grainy things onto my first page:

Pine grain (Derwent Drawing), grains of rice and salt (Molotow), wheat (pen and ink, acrylic); sand (Molotow)

(It being a concertina, I thought I'd use the back of another page and put some grains there, to be seen through the knot holes. There are a few that can't be seen easily, too).

... and the next page was also home to several thoughts:

Wooden handle of hand chisel (Molotow), alabaster grain (watercolour and watercolour pencil); pointillist landscape, imaginary (Molotow)

But the last two pages were home to one idea. A fairly off-topic idea, inspired by the "grain" more than by the the "texture".

John Barleycorn, folk song, as sung by Traffic. Molotow and acrylic inks

It's a song drawing. They started in last year's sketchbook exchange project, and they've come back in this year's.