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July 22, 2008

names of the mighty

by sven at 4:16 pm

hello

John Hankins (AKA castlegardener) has started a sketchbook exchange. And, much to my own surprise, I'm participating!

Ten people. Ten sketchbooks. Draw on five pages (ten, if you use both sides). Pass the sketchbook to the next person on the list. Ultimately, you get your book back with drawings from a bunch of cool artists.

My big secret: I mistakenly thought there would only be one sketchbook being passed around when I signed up for this. Oops. Oh well -- I'm committed now.

what a terrible thing to do

"What a terrible thing to do, to deface a perfectly serviceable painting -- especially with penmanship of dubious quality... And yet, I'm finding that the more layers I pile one atop another, the richer the visual texture I create. It's a technique I call "obliteration." I'm not sure what good will ultimately come of it -- but it's one of my best artistic insights of the past few years, so best to just keep going down this road and see where it leads me. Similarly, stream-of-consciousness text seems to have a place here. Promising."

black moonless night

I've been having a lot of fun with laminating pages with layers of different colored tissue paper. It's kind of like a doing a wash with paint -- but with potential for some really interesting textures.

blinding noon sun

I'm also having fun with black-on-black and white-on-white artwork. I'm really pleased that these scans turned out as well as they did. I expected them to be completely illegible.

disapproving elf

Heh. And because some folks in the exchange were joking around about inserting secret messages in their art... There's something hiding on the "hello" page if you look really closely.

Sorry, dear readers: I used a technique that can only be seen if you hold the book in your hands.

(But if you ask nicely, I'll tell you a cute story about how I originally happened upon said technique. ;-D)

posted by sven | July 22, 2008 4:16 PM | categories: sketchbook