sketchbook

a bolder hand

Most of my work is pretty delicate, leaving a lot of negative space for breathing room, but unless you are face to face with the original piece, it can be difficult to appreciate. Details can get lost pretty easily. So I wanted to break out of my norm a bit and go for something bolder, with stronger shapes and colors that could be seen from afar. Thoughts?

This one didn’t take very long for me to do and I love the gesture of the petals, they’re almost calligraphic at times. In doing this, I also rediscovered how seductive black can be – definitely on my to do list for future patterns. More black.

summer heat

As you can see, I’ve been playing around with a lot of plant motifs; trying to figure out what it takes to make a good pattern that could possibly translate to textiles. This is a little different than the way I’ve worked and drawn in the past, so I’m just trusting my intuition here. Hope you’re liking the progress… stay tuned for more!

spring mums

leafy

This is a doodle from my sketchbook, drawn on the fly. I remember it was a lazy afternoon sitting on my boyfriend’s couch and I just let my micron pen run itself across the paper. Sometimes these spontaneous kinds of drawings end up being the best. I wonder if I could cover a much larger space with these forms. They seem to be some weird kind of floral vegetation, but I can’t say exactly what. It kind of reminds me of kale. What does it remind you of?

mica angela hendricks

The uninhibited imagination of a child is truly a beautiful thing. We all begin our lives with whimsical ideas of how things come about and dreams of what they could be… and then at some point along the way, we learn otherwise. We are educated on common sense, science, physics, and so on, telling us what things are possible and logical – and what things aren’t. Thankfully, like Mica Angela Hendricks, we may be fortunate enough to produce offspring who will show us the way back to our former worlds of wonder.

Read this. Long story short, every parent gets backed into a corner at some point or another, when their child uses their own rules against them. But when Hendricks, an illustrator by trade, was forced to relinquished her sketchbook to her daughter, the results turned out to be sort of magical.

bridget davies illustration

Getting myself mentally and emotionally prepared for making work is as important as actually making the work. The first step always is and always will be finding inspiration in the talent of others. Thankfully, Pinterest and Tumblr make it easier than ever to find new artists to be jealous of. One such artist is Bridget Davies.

While it doesn’t fall in line with exactly what I do, it has that wonderful balance of whimsy and elegance that I am always so drawn to. Her lines are fluid yet thoughtfully articulated, almost like a great outfit that looks effortlessly fabulous.

creative masters: chandler o’leary

I stumbled upon Chandler O’Leary’s Drawn The Road Again travel blog thanks to one of my favorite daily reads, HonestlyWTF. As Chandler journeys from coast to coast, her memories transform into pen, ink, and watercolor onto the pages of her many moleskin notebooks. In drawing these experiences, she honors their temporal beauty more than she ever could with just a mere photograph. The simplicity of this act is a pure revelation; paying homage through expressive representation is a tradition that goes back to the origin of art itself. With new media flying around every day, we often forget how meaningful these artistic forms can be. They serve as a relic of the cultural and physical landscape we so take for granted. They remind us that in order to cultivate and preserve memories, we must pause, absorb, and reflect. This obviously comes second nature to Chandler, but her choice to share this passionate diary is as courageous as it is generous. She invites us into her personal history and her marks guide us through a romantic look at places and things we may have never noticed on our own. I’m so thankful that she took time out of her busy travels to connect with me and I hope you feel as enlightened as I do by her sincerity and dedication to her craft.

Describe what your work is about in one sentence.

I document my life and travels via sketchbook drawings, in order to create a record of where I’ve been and what I’ve experienced.

What’s your favorite object to draw?

Lettering. I’m a fiend for type (I’m a lettering artist in my “normal” professional work), so I’m always on the lookout for found typography, hand-lettered signs, vintage neon and street lettering. There’s a treasure trove of beautiful lettering out in the world, and some of the best stuff was done by people who were never trained as an artist or designer.

bits and pieces

Oof. Without Photoshop, it’s really hard for me to edit pictures of drawings without messing up colors and line work. So please just assume these look more delicate in person than they seem here.

Oh well, you get the gist at least! These are two patterns I’ve been messing with; shapes and lines just pour out without thought. To get these bits and pieces out is like a momentary cleanse.

Seemingly random, perhaps they represent thoughts or memories needing to be sorted out and categorized for me to make sense of them. I can’t really say definitively, but I do feel like they’re somehow weird little manifestations of internal currents – I guess really, all art is that.