Don't Mind the Arrow

Imaginary Animals

One of the blogs I have in my Google Reader is the Sketchbook Challenge. I read it, but I don't normally participate. Yesterday morning, though, there was an entry I just couldn't resist. It was written by Carla Sonheim, whose blog I have now also added to my reading list. Carla presented an irresistible tutorial on how to create a fun elephant, so I gave it a shot (and seriously, you should give it a try yourself, it was really fun).

Here is my progress on each of her 5 steps:

I scribbled a number of elephants like she asked. This was one of my last ones.

I went over the lines, thick and thin. I used a brush pen because it was the nearest thing.

Fill in areas with different colors of watercolor washes. You can see that at this point I added in a few pen lines to give me more closed areas.

Make some patterns and stuff. 

Use a white pen to make dots in the outline, and to add white to other areas if you want. (I highlighted the yellow dots and put another highlight on the eye.)

And there it is, just like that. I'll be honest, I didn't expect that much from my attempt at this (even though as I said, I was really intrigued by the tutorial). But I'm actually really happy with it! And it was fun - a great way to warm up and get in the right frame of mind for being creative.

Carla is giving away a couple of copies of her book - you can enter on her blog (this is the entry where you comment to enter). If you're interested, go ahead and throw your name in the ring! She's giving away one copy randomly and one to the person who has what she deems the best answer to why they want the book. I hope I get lucky and win one!

 

Drawing in Books

I did these pages a while back, but never got around to posting them. The outlines are drawn with a Pitt pen and then they're colored with Prismacolor pencils.

From Book Art

I think they'd look great as a framed series. Maybe one day I'll get around to actually framing them, or maybe I'll draw another set. These were just sort of doodle-y, so maybe I'd want to do something a little more refined. Or maybe not - I'm just not sure. One thing I'm sure of, though, is that I'm not done with this idea yet. Luckily, book blocks are in constant supply right now since I've been making journals. 

30 Days of Creativity Kickoff

Here we are, June 1, and I'm starting a new daily project. We'll see if I can make it past the first two weeks. In any event, I've got my first day's contribution done. I started it a few days ago because handbound books take more than a day to complete, but I finished it today so I'm counting it.

I got the book at a thrift store (at the same time I got my corduroy laptop bag that I embellished). The title, All on a Summer's Day, is what drew me to it. Since I'm still practicing my bookbinding skills, its somewhat beat up exterior was perfect - I didn't have to be too afraid to mess it up. It was a discarded library book, so I used some green paper wrapped around the bottom section to cover up the ugly library sticker on the spine and add some visual interest to the cover.

Inside, I used scrapbooking paper for the endpapers and recycled brown paper for the signatures. I'm thinking I'll just use this one myself and see how it holds up. I'm getting to the point where I want to start working on the book I'm planning to take to Germany, and I want to make sure I'm not doing anything that will mean the book won't last through the experience.