Leuchtturm Sketchbook Art

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.

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.  

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.

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.

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:

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:

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.

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.

Sketch copied from a photo over weeks