The Sketchbook Project

For the most part, my journal for The Sketchbook Project sponsored by the Art House Co-op, Brooklyn Art Library is complete.  Three days before the deadline!  Here is the size of the Moleskine journal when it arrived.  A flat little book with horrible paper that is not friendly at all to the mixed media artist!

Here is a side view of my completed journal.  Big, fat, juicy, and colorful!

Here is the cover.  I painted it black, using a very shiny micaceous  paint.  I added a bright butterfly image from an ad straddling front and back covers.  I think I will give it one more coat of paint.

My chosen theme was "In Flight."  I decided to use birds and butterflies to fill my pages.  I cut out and used some sketches from a small notebook on a few of the pages.  This bluebird is one of several that I drew and colored with colored pencil.

Here are a few of my favorite pages.  I tried out lots of different materials and techniques.

The two paintings below were done as part of the Collage Lab  (by Bee Shay) lessons on using gesso.  On the left, a dragonfly is stamped with gesso tinted with paint.  On the right, I painted the petals with gesso.  Both of the paintings are on cardboard.   I peeled back the top few layers to make it a little thinner.  The background pages are made by drawing with crayons, then painting over the crayon with watercolors. An old Kindergarten technique! 

Here is another spread that includes colored pencil drawings from another sketchbook of mine.  I drew and colored the pileated woodpeckers that we frequently observe at our mountain cabin, and sometimes see here at the house in Wake Forest.  I used a North American Field Guide as a reference.

They are collaged onto a background that includes painted napkins and paper towels.

The next one may look familiar.  I made a color copy from my other Moleskine journal of this original drawing/collage.  I used Neocolor II water soluble crayons to color the background pages to blend.

This drawing is based on a day last summer when my granddaughter, Lily, was running along the creek and butterflies were surrounding and chasing her.

Speaking of Lily, her artwork is part of the journal, too.  She calls herself an artist at age four, and we spend a lot of time coloring and painting together.  I always have a little sketchbook in my purse, which is often put to good use when we go out to eat.  I think she signed her name when she was only three...it does not look quite right!  I love children's artwork, and hope the viewers of this notebook will, too.

The backgrounds are colored with water-soluble crayons, and the marks along the border are art deco symbols from the book, Hand Lettering, by Marci Donley and Leann Singh.

Some of the fanciful butterflies that I drew and Lily colored are also on the inside back cover.

The background on the left is tissue paper surrounded by two kinds of decorative duct tape. The pages are perforated near the inner edge, and the tape should keep the pages from coming out of the book.  Plus it's pretty cool!

I included one more copy of art that is in my watercolor field notebook.  I cut up the copy and pasted it into the notebook, repainting and adding new text.  This was the day that a flock of goldfinches showed up at the feeding station at our mountain cabin last spring.

I'll show some more pages in another post.  Thanks for going along "In Flight" with me!