bonheur: sketchbooks

Showing posts with label sketchbooks. Show all posts

My Sketchbooks

Any artist worth their salt earns their bones filling a gazillion sketchbooks with doodles

I made these when I was in my bookbinding phase.

sketchbooks are one of the best sources when you're considering starting a sketchbook. It's both a diary + sketchbook, drawn and written daily records of his Moroccan travels.

I've always treasured this picture of JMW Turner's leather bound sketchbook. Many of his sketches can be seen in the Tate's Turnercollection in London, where Turner donated much of his artwork. Closer at hand is the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, CT. You can actually touch a Turner sketchbook.

Make an appointment first

A Turneresque page from my own sketchbook

Multi-doodles done while doing an artists residency in Poppi, Tuscany

I love to put down blobs of color and then create a little scene on top

Sketchbooks provide the chance to make quick summaries of what you see like a quick camera snapshot. Spontaneous notation is what it's all about. Often preparatory sketches are more personal, more interesting than the final finished painting.

More color blobs + grape picker doodles

Chateau doodles. The thing about sketchbooks is they are private.
You can be as casual and messy and experimental as you like.No ones going to see what you do...
Well almost no one

Some of the sketchbook paraphrenalia you can "collect" in the name of sketching! There are endless art supplies out there waiting to tempt you and every bit as luscious as any pastry.

reade more...

David Hockney at RA

Last night I went to the David Hockney show at the RA(Royal Academy) of works commissions just 4 years ago. The scale of the pictures was designed especially to go on RA's big walls.

Pretty much the hottest show in town. So hot the exhibit is open till midnight on Fridays. I went at 6pm and waited about a half hour. It was very cold and I was not dressed properly. Nevermind.

Once inside it was warm and crowded in a cocktail party manner...

People were milling around somewhat matter of factly...

I LOVED this wall of big casual watercolors.

Of course one shouldn't be taking photos! Of course not...

LOVED this big value study charcoal drawing - there were lots of these too.

There was lots of everything David Hockney landscape.

Big rooms full of it...

And many HUGE paintings I didn't dare to shoot - one made up of 60 canvases!

The Hockney nine-screen films are wonderful.

Loved this tap dancing number to Tea For Two.

This chair is soooo Hockney.

Then the Yorkshire Wolds landscape films, shot with 9 cameras mounted on the bonnet of a slow-moving jeep. Hockney sat in the back seat directing, using a grid of 9 monitors to 'draw' the scene. Hockney does not view this new strand of his work as a diversion, but rather another method of depicting the landscape.