Storytelling

I've enjoyed making little books and stories...

so when I heard about an online class with some artists I've followed for a long time, I decided to sign up for the storytelling class in Sketchbook "Skool".  The classes are six weeks long with six different teachers. 

In the first class, one of the assignments was to illustrate a recipe. I used a recipe that we make every Christmas morning.

The next week, we drew people in action and I posted most of those last time. Here are a couple more, from the PSU Farmers Market....

One of the assignments for the third week was to draw a memory from the  first day of school.  I had memories from kindergarden, but there really wasn't anything I was interested in drawing. Then I remembered our bus driver when I was a first grader. I was very shy and didn't like to leave home to go to school. The bus stop seemed dangerous with kids giving "Indian Burns" and pelting each other with acorns. When I got on the bus though, we were in the safe care of our ex-military bus driver who taught us some raucous songs. I loved that and can still remember the verses to my favorite, 'My Gal's a Corker.'

This week, we had an assignment to draw people from photos quickly in pencil and then in ink. I'm not used to drawing from photos and always feel that it's cheating (it is for and Urban Sketcher), but I really had a good time. I drew from books in an accordion book.

Then I went to The Big Draw at PNCA and tried to draw people in action, on the spot. That was harder to do nicely, so it resulted in unfinished people and the need to cover up a mess-up with some origami paper.

It's really been an inspiring class and it makes me want to keep telling more stories!

A Fun Recipe

I've been taking an online watercolor lettering class, with the idea that I might add more lettering to my journals or sketchbooks. Besides doing the letters, we also make curlicues and branches and various types of ornamentation. I've always enjoyed doodling and adding flourishes to things, so this is right up my alley.

Last week we had a lesson in painting rosemary among other things. My friend, Heather had recently told me about her crazy invention for roast potatoes with rosemary, so I decided to illustrate her recipe. She had the idea to insert the rosemary in the potatoes and her husband and son helped out by taking the potatoes to the workbench. The recipe has a become a family favorite and now you can try her tasty treat!

Here are some of the other things I've done for the class:

letters...

and lots of curlicues...

and scrolls--all very fun.

Day 27: Recipe

This morning, I started a sketch of the beautiful sky over a neighbor's house. I painted in the blue sky and the lavender clouds, but when I had time to get back to it, it was dark.

Mostly, I've been in the kitchen today, but I took some time to illustrate a favorite recipe. This is an adaptation of a recipe from my friend, Jayne. Although we're having our traditional vegetarian Thanksgiving tomorrow, we won't be having this because we've got too many other things to eat. I'm feeling full just thinking about it.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Sketching Indoors

Here are a couple of sketches done while drinking coffee and nibbling on pastry. This one was done in the Daily Cafe that's inside Rejuvenation Hardware. I wanted to copy this recipe (even though it was only one day after Thanksgiving) and the old cabinet seemed like a good accompaniment to it. This was a fun place to draw, in part because the delightful wait-staff would sometimes break into singing and dancing to the Abba tunes being played. Even some customers were swaying to the tunes while they got their coffee additives from the cabinet.

This sketch was done at Kennedy School. I'm pretty sure I stole the the orange lantern composition from one Kalina did at a sketchcrawl a year ago. It's a great place to draw, but I left out a lot of what's really there.  There's too much for me to get into a sketch.