In my previous post I talked about beginning a sketchbook journal and filling an entire Roald Dahl notebook with art and imagery and text like a journal. I will now speak about getting myself a Leuchtturm sketchbook that I began in 2017, round about the same time, to draw more freely. I felt that some of the problems holding me back could have been the quality of the Roald Dahl paper or the lines and grids in the background. I like drawing on proper thick white paper and the Leuchtturm enabled me to do this.
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Leuchtturm Sketchbook |
It's funny the way my brain works, I found it a challenge to use a second book and try to be free. The Roald Dahl book had order because it was led by the days events. I started the Leuchtturm book like a journal also but my brain played tricks asking questions like, how can I have two journals on the go, what if one has some info but the other misses info? I let myself be more free in the Leuchtturm with the view to leaving behind dates altogether. It is a constant challenge not to add pressure as well as keeping the inner critic at bay!
Above, my first entry, I copied a pumpkin from Google Images using watercolour pencils, dabbing them slightly with a brush of water at the end. On the second page I used cheap watercolours to encourage myself to learn and practise.
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Closeup of the pumpkin drawing |
My next entry I used a sketchbook journal entry image from the internet as a guide and I collected a real leaf off the road and used this to work into the art. Practised some more watercolour. Pleased with the layout.
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Watercolour work and working in leaves. |
This next entry I was inspired by a card I received with cacti on it. As I grow cacti and it's one of my passions I incorporated it into the book, I drew my conophytum succulents in flower.
Being Halloween I looked for Halloween pictures and sketched this pumpkin picture and was so pleased with how it turned out! I really enjoyed the shading!! I used some Halloween stickers on it too.
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Pumpkin drawing copy |
Because I was so pleased with my pumpkin sketch I looked for another Google image to copy and decided to be led by what I liked. I found this lovely fence and wheelbarrow sketch which I freely copied and shaded:
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Close-up of the drawing |
Alongside the Leuchtturm I was continuing to journal in the Roald Dahl (see samples in my previous post). As planned, in the leuchtturm I moved gradually away from journal entries and dates and just drew what inspired me. This drawing of a whale came up either in a book or on Google Images and I copied it because it was interesting. I used watercolours.
I decided to draw some lighthouses because that is what I had been doing the last time I quit drawing so the next few pages in the Leuchtturm book are sketches of lighthouses copied from Google:
I added the text at a later date when I thought the sketchbook needed more than just drawings. I had also, before I quit a few years ago, been using camel oil pastels and camel YouTube drawing projects which I never finished so I was determined to complete another one in this sketchbook. The following I worked on over time using camel oil pastels:
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Camel oil pastel picture |
This little sketch I copied from a newspaper because the lovely ship and lighthouse image struck me as nice. I stuck the original in beside it.
Progress?
It was at this point that I decided to be bold and make an entry in the Leuchtturm from my mind and not copy. I was pleased I was not being rigid with myself and that I was picking things to copy that inspired me. I had some interesting pages. It was time to use my own imagination. I was SO disappointed with what I was capable of! Compared to the lovely shaded wheelbarrow and pumpkin - this below was all I could draw! I was furious! I used it more as a journal info page because I could not draw anything from my mind.
It was months before I went back to this book, disappointed and frustrated by how one minute I could copy really well, but the next, be like someone who could not draw at all when it came to using my own imagination!
Beginning Again:
Several months passed before I drew again, after my disappointment with trying to use my imagination but I got a book to help me chillout one day and was inspired by the sloth on the front cover so I decided to copy it. I thought, from now on I shall keep to copying and see how it goes, after the disaster of trying to go my own way and being disappointed.
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Brian the Sloth copy |
I also started to re-do exercises from that old book I had "Draw What you see, Not What you Think you See". I found that squeezing these into the gaps of my notebook pages made the book more interesting. It did not matter to me at this time that everything was a copy or a tutorial exercise, at least the book was filled with art and that is what mattered! I think that the next time I go to 'use my imagination' I won't try to draw something out of thin air. Perhaps I will take my own photograph and copy that, maybe some flowers or something.
At our local garden centre I kept passing this picture on a tray so in the end took a photo of it and determined to draw it because it had so many lovely sketching potential and delicious shading. It was already a piece of art so it was not an original but I still at this point enjoy copying and this was something I really wanted to copy so I just went for it. I worked on the below picture over several weeks. The picture is edge to edge of 2 Leuchtturm pages and is drawn freehand with sketching pencils.
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Sketch copied from a photo over weeks |
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