So, on my last post I got some good questions from my friend John Lechner about my process on these sketchbook pages. So I'm going to try to answer them here…
How do you think of what to draw each day?
Well, usually it's pretty random. Sometimes I try to take the day itself into consideration… is it a holiday? Is it a special occasion? Sometimes I pull from things I heard or saw that day (on the radio, on tv, driving around town). Sometimes I start with a kind of theme in mind and just let the pencil go and see where it takes me… for instance, on 3/22 (the lounging girl above), I just started with a nouveau style border and NO IDEA what I was going to draw inside it. Sometimes I have an idea of something I want to practice, that's why I've been drawing a lot more people lately. I LOVE drawing animals, people have never been as interesting to me, but I'm trying to change that.
How do you decide what medium to use?
I really just try to keep things mixed up. I do admit, I prefer dry media - pencils, markers, etc. I break out the paints and ink jars from time to time… but I do have a tendency to be impatient with wet media. There's a certain lack of control that frustrates me… for instance on 3/23 I got the bright idea of drawing with some waste printer-ink (inkjet printers waste SO MUCH ink). I recently installed external waste-ink reservoir bottles on my printer because it's gotten to the point where the internal ones are filled and ink was regularly spilling out the front of it when I printed. These bottles make it really easy to see how much ink is being wasted and they're easily removed - so I can dip in brushes and fountain pens. It was kind of fun, but the ink SOAKS into the paper, have to be conservative with it on the page… it bled through in a couple places, so I was forced to use an acrylic foundation painting on the next page to cove up the spots. And of course, on acrylic I couldn't sketch out ideas first, so I just had to give a go at drawing some stuff out of my head in marker, with nothing to follow & no erasing (I'm listening to the Mansfield Park audiobook and went on a bit of a Jane Austen film binge over the weekend, LOL).
How much time do you spend on each one?
This is where things vary greatly… I can spend anywhere from 10 minutes to several days on each page. I think the average is between 1 & 2 hrs though. Guestimates for these:
3/21 - under 2 hrs
3/22 - 2+ hrs
3/23 - under 2 hrs
3/24 - under 2 hrs
What I find really interesting, is how I can develop ingrained associations with where or when or what I was doing while drawing some of these pages. Others I completely forget. When I reach the end of each book, sometimes I'll go back and make a little note on the pages that have strong memories of where I was or what I was doing (watching/listening to a specific tv show or on a plane, for instance) while I was working on it.
3 comments:
These are wonderful, Melinda. Love hearing about your process.
I love the ingrained associations that come from making sketches everyday. It certainly helps my recall with whatever happened on that day!
Thank you Jennifer & Christina! It's nice to hear you are enjoying these posts… sometimes I feel like it's just all going out into a void. ;)
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