My 2012 Sketchbook Project

Just when I was about to give up hope, my sketchbook for the 2012 Sketchbook project finally got digitalized and added to the online library (lesson learned for next year, mail it in a few weeks before the deadline instead of the day of, and scan some of the pages yourself before mailing it off!). You can view the entire thing on the Art House website HERE, but you'll need to register for a user name & password, so I'm going to share a few of my favorites pieces from it.

This was my first time participating in the sketchbook project, and while I didn't love every page of the end result, I was incredibly glad I signed up, because I got me trying a few new mediums and some I haven't done in a long long time. It's a good thing I'm not being judged on craft (that is, how "neatly" I put the book together), because my book got pretty beat up during the course of the project. It ended up much like one of my regular sketchbooks, bent/warped pages, some pieces sticking out, and some pages a bit more sloppy than others. That is definitely one of the points I'd like to improve on for next year!

My first page:

cut paper silhouette, (supposed to be me! hah!)

My favorite:

Ben Franklin Bridge on my commute home from work (the background is collage, which is a new medium for me, and the bridge is done in ink, using a pen with a nib, which I kept dipping in a bottle of india ink and making a huge dripping mess, oh man -what a tough medium, probably should have used a micron pen, but anyway I still ended up liking it somehow!)

I took my sketchbook to the Miami Zoo:

Elephant, cut paper and colored pencil ( while drawing this, I realized Elephants really look like aliens)

And on a really boring trip to a government office:

Drawing from a photo using a grid:

 Pencil, smudge stick (it's been a really long time since I've done this! reminds me of sophomore year of art school)

Here's part of the photo I was drawing from:

The second to last page:

??? I literally wrote this while in the post office, on the day the sketchbook was to be postmarked, 60 seconds before the place closed, while the postal worker asked me to hurry the heck up, and come to counter already.....this was supposed to be the key points I wanted the reader to know about me.....I just hope it's too small for any of you to read, and that's all I'm going to say about that :)

the last page:

is the opposite of the first

....and there are 32 other pages, but you'll have to sign in the the Art house website to see them!