365 days of sketches Archives

April 26, 2015September 14, 2016

Sketches 16-33/365

I’ve let the last two weeks worth of sketches accumulate without documenting them here on my new blog…but I have been working hard to translate some of the imagery to my pots. I blame my deadline for my fast approaching group sale for the lax posting. The pots in the photo above are currently cooling in the soda kiln at the Colorado Potters Guild as I write this. My compadres and I will be unloading them on Monday, April 27th at 2pm – just in time to inventory them for our Spring Sale happening April 30 – May 2!

Sketch 11/365 4-3-15 definitely influenced my pots

An interesting thing happened when I was working my sketchbook imagery to my clay work – the mark making has to be simplified when adding it to a pot. Conversely, I started getting a ton of ideas that I wanted to explore in 2D once I started adding surface interest to the pots. My sketches have become increasingly more colorful, playful and detailed.

I’m having so much fun with these and am considering recreating some of these as prints. The one thing I keep asking myself is why haven’t I keep a sketchbook before? I’m past the 30 days of sketching and often have ideas lined up for future drawings. It does take some discipline to make time to draw everyday, but it feels like such a great investment.

Since I haven’t kept up with my posting, here’s a quick 15 second Flipogram to highlight the first 30 days. I am going to make a concerted effort to post at least 3 times a week going forward.

April 1, 2015

Sketches 5/365 – 8/365

Sketches 7 + 8 came pretty easy to me and are the inverse of each other. I decided to give myself some self imposed weekly parameters to help guide my sketching efforts. This week is ink and pen.

Keep in mind, I’m trying to use these as potential surface design treatments for my clay work. Some of my first week’s sketches could translate to clay, but after drawing 7 & 8, I know that these can definitely be used on a clay surface. In my mind, the ink is an underglaze or slip, the black lines are Mishima, and the white sgraffito. I’m will be heading to the Colorado Potters Guild this afternoon and am going to start the process of decorating some slab/coil built pieces that will be soda fired April 24.

Meanwhile, here are the other sketches I neglected to add, along with the “ingredients list” for each should I ever want to attempt to recreate one of these:

March 26, 2015

Sketch 2/365

In keeping with my intention of working intuitively and fast, sketch 2/365 turned into an abstracted landscape. I like what’s happening in parts of the piece, but not all.

I spent about 20 min. total on this not including the time for drying after I collaged a tea bag and some newspaper onto the page – I started making dinner while the page was drying. After I was done, I was reminded of graduate school studying landscape architecture. We called these quick drawings “ideograms” which are basically quick sketches meant to convey a concept or idea graphically. We used them in the early design phases to flesh out how something might be organized and to visualize a project. This was one of my favorite exercises. We also employed model making when building concepts.

When I called it done, I wondered if a more narrative piece like this would work on clay? Maybe tiles, but I don’t know if something in the round would work.

Ingredients:

Sketchbook with heavy stock paper for water media
Dried tea bag emptied of its contents
Printed newspaper torn (I selected an article that talked about the redevelopment of an area close to my house)
Liquitex satin varnish
Paint brush
Water
Scissors
Brush pen
Black pen – Pilot 0.5 V-Ball (one of my favorites)
Ink pads (not waterproof) (turquoise, black, sepia and white)
Hand carved rubber stamp
Sketch and wash pencil

P.S. I mis-dated this piece. It should read 3-25-15 not 3-26-15.