Curious Goods Onionskin Journal, part 1

Over Christmas holidays I received a gift from one of my best friends Annelyn of Curious Goods. She's been making handmade journals since we were both frustrated art kids in academic school, and her latest experiment is the onionskin journal.

Onionskin paper was used for creating multiple typed documents with carbon paper, or for writing letters to send via airmail. It was even used in animation: "onionskinning" is the process of flipping sheets of animation roughs to check the smooth transitions between drawings. 

It's light, translucent, and sturdy, able to take even fountain pen ink without bleeding. Because of that, it's the ideal material for an art journal.

I can draw, write, paste, layer, and otherwise play with this journal as much as I want. I can fill the blank pages to the edge with scraps, sketches, and my thoughts.

I've even worked on it during an international flight!

My habit of writing backwards seems to suit this journal. Two columns of text suit the wider format, making it look more like a book. 

The backwards writing turns the words into just another design element, a textured background against the collage and drawings. Also, writing backwards makes me feel like everyone's ideal diarist and art hero, Leonardo da Vinci.

I love adding little movable elements like flaps of paper with illustrations or stickers underneath.

My collection of inks, fountain pens, stamps, stickers and washi tape is also put to good use. In fact, I printed out some of my own art on sticker paper to use in this journal.

As they fill up, the pages wear and wrinkle and gain weight. Flipping through the journal is a sensory joy, listening to the crinkle and savouring the feel of the paper.

I loved the journal so much I ordered some more. I'm looking forward to filling up these one hundred and ninety-two pages with my art, and many pages after that!

Paris trip sketches, part 1

Visited Paris for the first time since 2006! It's just as beautiful, and it seems people are much nicer than the other two times I was there. Then again I feel like I spoke more French than last time.

I love drawing on trips but I don't usually get a chance in company. Have some drawings, mostly from the train. I did get stopped from using watercolour in the museums - pencil is okay.

Stay tuned for more soon!

nature sketching - spring to summer

This spring has been very productive for diary sketching! I got a little serious about hanami and kept a log of my favourite cherry blossom viewing locations.

Every year is also a search for the perfect cherry-blossom-pink ink...and I think I've finally found it! J. Herbin's Bouquet D'Antan is a pale dusty pink that is a delight to draw infinite flower petals with. Put it in a wet drawing fountain pen like a Lamy Safari and watch it go. I found I couldn't stop drawing bunches and bunches of them.

All these flowers and the twittering birds returned from the long winter made me miss our garden at home, and I drew some Philippine garden birds in a small Fabriano notebook I'm using as a colour sketch journal.

Sailor HiAce Neo pen with Kiwa-Guro ink,
Cass Art watercolours

And more recently, as the cold days clash with the hot, there have been some lightning storms that were wonderful to watch. It's hard to draw lightning at the best of times, let alone from memory, but I just had to get those images down before they faded.

Winsor and Newton watercolours
with white Kuretake graphic paint

This has been a very pink post, apropos for spring. Looking forward to summer!

inktober review

The Inktober Initiative was created by artist and illustrator Jake Parker in 2009 and became a massive worldwide art event, much like NaNoWriMo is for writers. I joined in the last 2 years; my first year was a huge failure but this year I managed to get some fun work out despite other project demands.

In fact it got me into the habit of regularly drawing something for myself along with my commissioned work. Inktober is lots of fun and I love being part of the community; I'm definitely doing it again next year!

messing about

Some more collage work to wind down from current projects. After hours of meticulous drawing it's good to pick up scissors and paste and slap together a few compositions.

Stamps, Neocolor crayon, washi tape, tea and magazine clipping.

Cotman watercolour, white Signo pen and black Platinum Preppy.
Inspired by Lisa Congdon's fish.

Tea, stamps and magazine clipping.

some things I have been doing...

Here is a preview of some things I have been up to.

Sketches and drawings in various notebooks, with various fountain pens and brush pens, captured by iPhone camera and saved to Evernote for the most part.

On the fly: Philippine holiday

I still haven't got the hang of travel sketching - I am still not very good at drawing on the fly; I am too nervous and hesitant. But here are some attempts.

Drive-by sketching in a Manila taxi. Copic Multiliner 1.0.

My cousin's friend had a gig at a club: it was too dark to see his face, and our table was off to the side a bit, but I did my best with pen and coloured it in later. Pen & Ink Sketch fountain pen with Lexington Grey ink, Faber Castell brush markers.

If there's anywhere I really love to hang out in my hometown, it's the Art District: a trendy area that grew out of the parking lot of a local department store. 

Bars, restaurants and clubs grow on top of one another, and street artists are invited to cover the walls with murals.

I went to an improv show and had some great mojitos in the lovely tropical weather. Didn't get much drawing done, but had a great time!

pots & pans: cotman compact set

When I first arrived in the UK and was giddy with the high of being in London again after 5 long years HUZZAH, I may have staggered into the London Graphic Centre during a summer sale and bought a set of watercolours for less than £10.

The Winsor & Newton Cotman Compact Set is actually one of W&N's most downmarket colour sets. W&N is the everyman paint company, and Cotman is its budget brand for students.

Still, some of my best work was done with really cheap kids' paint--Golden was the cheapest, but Prang tempera is still one of my favourite art materials--so I was excited to give it a try.

Since I got this set I've used it pretty often, as you will have noticed in the past few posts. It's not as waxy as Prang but just as bright. It comes with 14 colour pans, but you can also buy individual colours. I swapped out 2 pans, because I am a little bit crazy about Prussian Blue and Payne's Grey and cannot conceive of leaving them out of any art set if I can possibly get them.

Because of the construction of the box, though, I can still pack the Chinese White and Pale Cadmium Red in the saucer that fits in the thumb space (seen here clipped to the side). I can even fit my mini Sakura Koi waterbrush (thanks, Mom! ♥) in the central groove, alongside the surprisingly usable synthetic brush that comes with the set.

One word of caution though: I had to fix the pans to the bottom of their trays with dabs of blu-tack, as they tend to pop out and spill everywhere and are a pain to sort out again. The paint blocks eventually stick to the trays with use, but I helped them along by wetting the bottom of the blocks and sticking them down, like votive candles. Otherwise, this is a really cute little box that is a pleasure to use!

Sketches app

There is a new free drawing app for the iPad called Sketches. I downloaded it and it's great!

It has brush pen, felt tip marker and paintbrush as discrete tools. There's only one brush size for each unless you buy the Pro version (£1.49!), but the brush pen and technical pen make up for each other. It's quite sensitive, and you need to pick the option to undo via button because the 'backwards swipe' undo just makes a mark on your drawing. But I like it much more than Paper!

a kingdom by the sea

This isn't even the palace; this is just the magician's house.

Because I am not an architect, I have haphazardly mixed a bunch of different levels in one plan, based on the places where my characters will be spending the most time. (To be honest, I would like to see romantic leads spending more time in the kitchen, but I'm afraid I'm defeated by the write-what-you-know thing.)

Why is it that although I know nothing about architecture, I insist on doing these every time I want to do a comic? The answer is because the art needs to flow properly, and to achieve that I need to know where everything is, and get used to it. Also, I am obsessed with production design.

Some more 'setting' sketches:

(What is going on with that roof...?)

page a day: villa

Pen and ink wash is both an exercise in completion and in restraint. You have to be careful about what you end up emphasising. In my mind the water was the focus of this picture, but my contrast control needs some work. Also I didn't use rulers or vanishing points, and I only started using pencil a third of the way through. It shows.

My advice? Unless you are an architect and can do this in your sleep, pencil your damn architecture in first. Even when using a reference.

continuing alterations

More 'work' on the altered book...

I say 'work' because this isn't really a project or even a work-in-progress, it's an art journal. As such I've become much less invested in the outcome of the various pages than I am in my actual projects; I'm more interested in putting down the feeling I have at the moment I decide to make an entry, in whatever media I can use right away.

Sometimes I spend ages layering a page spread with gesso and various bits, while at other times I just want to set marks down as fast as possible. Results range from empty and scratchy:

...to layouts that I'm much happier with:

Mixed media, last spread all Sharpies. They go very well with the paper of this book, although I think they might bleed and soak in over time. Ah well, at least the scan will stay nice.