Sketchbook Project Continued

Next time I do something like this, I must sign up earlier. I had intended to create a cohesive plan for the sketchbook, but then I noted how little time I have left to complete it. The project requires that you fill your sketchbook and have it in the mail by January 15th. That's a lot of pages for someone with a day job, a Christmas-celebrating family, and novel revisions she wants to keep up the momentum on. So the planning phase is out. It's more important that I keep drawing. I'm pantsing it, letting the pictures on one page lead me to the next. Here are the eight spreads I drew Sunday and yesterday. I'm still not quite halfway through the book.

I'll let the images explain themselves:

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

The next two sketchbook spreads

Boy, do I need to draw faster if I'm going to fill all the pages in time to send the book off by January 15th.

Another page

The Sketchbook Project page I drew last night:

The Sketchbook Project

About a month ago I signed up to participate in the Sketchbook Project, a project/challenge offered through the Art House Co-op in Brooklyn. I decided to let the folks in Brooklyn choose a theme for me from their list. I was assigned "This is not a sketchbook." Next time I think I'll choose my own theme. I really wanted to sketch, not to turn the book into something else, so I decided to negate the negative in the theme. I received the moleskine cahier about a week later. I am slowly filling the pages, mixing words and pictures, and skipping every other page so that ink bleed-through won't be an issue.

More to come...

More character study sketches

Character sketches

This afternoon I've been working on the look of a character for a picture book I'm writing.

Jillian is a girl who loves to draw fairies.

Boys in action

More play with scratchboard

Sunday sketching

The picture book I'm working on for my Writing for Younger Children workshop has a girl main character. So this weekend, in anticipation of needing to develop her character for illustrations, I have been sketching girls:

ScratchArt

These days I have been spending most of my time revising a middle grade novel. That's going well, but slowly. I have also signed up for a workshop on writing for young children at The Writers' Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Class began last Thursday. It's a seven-week long course that I'm hoping will inspire lots of stories suitable for pairing with my own illustrations. So far so good.

Naturally, this means less time for drawing (I still have that day job too), but I do manage to get a bit of sketching in here and there. I joined the Dupont Drawing Group and have attended two life-drawing sessions; however, I won't be posting any pictures from that on this strictly PG-rated blog. I probably won't attend more sessions until the writing workshop ends in mid-November.

Of course, being one of those people who was born with a drawing pencil in her hand, I can't suppress my sketch demons entirely. Inspired by the delightful and brilliant work of Sean Ashby, I have begun to play with scratchboard. Here's my first sheet of scratch doodles:

This medium would lend itself well to black & white interior art for middle grade novels. That's right up my alley!