A New Sketchbook

Nothing beats a fresh, brand new, nice quality sketchbook given to you and your classmates!

If you are not an artist, you may not understand, but a new sketchbook can be a big deal.

Questions I ask myself:

What am I going to draw in this sketchbook?

What should I dedicate this sketchbook too?

What medium am I going to use?

Serious commitments are made when an artist begins a new sketchbook!

 So after some time, I was finally ready to break in the new sketchbook-

I decided this sketchbook would be only black and white doodles. 

 A sketchbook dedicated to my commitment to doodle and draw more.

Decisions made, so now time to put pen to paper-

At this point, staring at a blank page can be artistic suicide-

This is where thinking too much can make you quit before you begin.

Trust me I know - been there too many times.  I was not going to let that happen this time.

So, I just went with what I was feeling at the moment!

And I just kept going...

Working on this page on and off for about a week.

Finally, I called it complete.

This type of sketching, doodling, or meditative process (whatever you may call it) has given me an outlet for relaxing sketchbook time, a place to put design compositions or shapes I may see in my surrounding world and has also given me a source of my ideas that I could translate into other mediums (like printmaking)!

Playing around with photo editing.

I don't always draw in a sketchbook though, sometimes just a small piece of paper will do.

5 Petal Delight

Flying Through Waves

Petals and Points

No blank paper has been safe around me lately!

Just pick up a pen and doodle, you never know what you will create!

Thanks to my teacher for the sketchbook!

continuing to push myself out of my artistic comfort zones to simply create on this artist holiday,

hannah

The Finale - Happy Crabby

I finished Happy Crabby!

Click on Part 1 and Part 2 to see how Happy Crabby began in this printmaking process.

I printed a total of 11 that look like this.

Quite a challenge lining up the plate for 3 separate colors!

This is the linoleum block that I carved down to the black line visible here.

Always loved those eyes!

In this reduction print process, there can be so much block cut away 

that when inking, it will get onto other parts of the plate.

This is vindictive of linoleum printing.

I wasn't so sure about the excess ink at first

and cut a little more block away.

But after a couple runs, I liked it!

Here's some different prints and practice prints with other colors-

2 color reduction print - Magenta Pink and Black

Another 2 color reduction print - Teal and Black

So glad I went with pink instead of this color for the final prints!

Thanks to Johnston Community College!

Striving more for direction and less for perfection on this artist holiday,

hannah