March Theme
Making Your Mark (Doodles & Mark Making)
March 21 - Week 12
Art Challenge: As a Focal Point
Journal Prompt: Coming Into Focus
Hey Everyone and welcome to Week 12! I am so excited about this week because our featured artist is Danny Gregory - an artist that I greatly admire and who has been indirectly instrumental in my own art journey. I started reading Danny's blog years ago and was thrilled last year when he and fellow artist, Koosje Koene developed "Sketchbook Skool," an online klassroom for sketchbook artists. I spend a lot of time in their klassroom and have learned from so many wonderful and interesting artists. Sketching is probably one of my favorite pastimes and I love keeping detailed art journals of my travels. In honor of Sketchbook Artists everywhere, I decided to put myself out there and do a sketch for this week's challenge. In his classes, Danny encourages you to start with a PEN - not a pencil - YIKES! But the good thing about using a pen is that it forces you to ignore {or embrace} imperfections in your artwork! You can't erase, so you have no choice but to keep going. Sketching this way has helped me to draw faster and looser. I am always "on the fly" when I'm trying to document things in my travel journals and I have no time to erase things and do the over.
So to begin the challenge, I took a deep breath . . . and drew the outline of my camera. Aaack! See the wonky lines in my lens? My brain was telling me, "you suck - that is all wrong," but my heart was telling me to keep going - don't worry about those funky shapes and the weird perspective. So I kept pushing. I added some cross-hatching to define my darker values. . .
Okay - well at least it resembles a camera . . . my brain was starting to calm down a bit at this point. There was no going back. It's in PEN!
Adding watercolor made this camera come to life - {be quiet brain - it DOES look like a camera}. The stressful moments passed and then I got comfortable with my sketch. Dare I say I actually liked it? And because I am in love with my camera strap, I decide to add that on too . . .
A few well-placed stamped letters are now a reminder to me to stay "focused" and not to listen to the negative voices inside my head. I loved this challenge and I am looking forward to seeing how you all approach it - be sure to stop by Danny Gregory's blog to see what he has in store for us - I know you will be inspired!
supplies used this week
For more information on this week's challenge you can find us here:
Flickr
Instagram: #documentedlife #documentedlifeproject
Looking for previous challenges? click HERE
Visit our blogs: Sandi Keene, Roben-Marie Smith, Rae Missigman
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