Sketchbook, process work, and other creative endeavors I pursue in my free time.
And a happy New Year! I cannot believe how quickly this year has gone.
This was supposed to be for this year’s Christmas cards but I didn’t finish in time. Truthfully I didn’t think about finishing in time. Perhaps I will save it for next year.
I made this as a Christmas recipe card to go with Christmas treats for the teachers I work with. Thankfully, I did finish this in time.
I actually have two going right now a small and a large am trying to not overthink when to use which and just let whim take over. So far it’s going well. The small one I am utilizing I actually made a few years ago and it has an unintentional but somehow unavoidable resemblance to the Grail Diary. I had started using it as a vacation memoir but then…. Didn’t go on vacation for a while….. so I decided that it may get better use as a purse book…. (A5)
Of course then I made Big Red and have been enjoying the use of a “normal” size. (A4) so it’s been on the shelf for the last month or so.
Big Red….. named for its whopping 560 cream colored pages. She’s hefty, but thus far, worth the purse weight. I almost made it thicker but decided to try and stay reasonable since, let’s face it, it will take me years to get through this hunk of paper.
First page of the little one. I’ve been really wanting to play with ornamentation…. So I did….. After I sectioned off and secured the pages documenting my camping trip.
Personally I feel like this is a super solid start to Big Red…. I can feel it already. This is going to be a most excellent sketchbook to work in. This is a work in progress of the next two pages. It’s going to be so colorful…. So far it’s rather nature oriented isn’t it?
A fabulous wrap dress.
A skirt to go with this blouse.
This silk number is reversible. Best idea ever…..
So I was about to post about my new sketchbooks that I’ve been using for a couple of months now. And I just realized I never recorded anything of the skinny traveler’s notebook that I bought and seriously disliked using…. I probably just wanted to avoid sounding negative. I didn’t like the paper that it came with so I replaced it with a couple of trimmed down signatures from the old book that I didn’t use… I didn’t want them to go to waste. As much as I didn’t enjoy it though, there were some fun pages.
I like a sketchbook to start out strong…. Which I don’t really think I did here, but it was fun and it was a start. You can’t always be amazing… that would just be boring now wouldn’t it.
A vest that I made and a collage that deteriorated as time went on.
And then the idea to illustrate The Hobbit came about after this sketch… just about a year or two later.
A fun study of one of my student’s chicken.
Planning a couple of dresses… which I made and have shared.
These are all just some ideas that I wanted to jot down for some final works. Also the Hobbit Illustration Project was born.
Working out which new tiny travel watercolor palette to buy… I went with the skinny one because I like the color organization best.
And these are just some doodles/ practice bits.
I would like to do a finished painting of this one though. I think I could do it way better.
And that’s about it other than some plans for improving my purse, making a new pencil/art case, making the new sketchbook, Big Red, and ideas for the illustration #4 for The Hobbit. Quite useful but not really exciting enough to take a picture of it.
Or H.I.P as I’ve started referring to it in my planner. I actually finished this one a while ago but I’m terrible at updating things. Belated New Year’s resolution, I’m going to be better at that.
I started working on #4 but I’m still not pleased with my Gandalf and I haven’t had much time or energy to devote to it lately.
I was wanting this to be a little more sketch-like but it was one of those scenarios where I had to keep working it until it looked right. I also probably should have centered it a little more but, hey, you live and learn. Maybe I could add corners of other pictures down at the bottom to make it less awkward. I’ll update if I do something with it.
I was honestly so pleased with it. Not gonna lie, it felt really good to do.
I titled it For Halcyon Skies….. after the original poem, America the Beautiful.
There was so much time that I was unable to work on this one. I have to keep reminding myself that this is a SIDE project… at least for now. But it is okay if I don’t have time to work on it. I have been putting in extra hours at work to make it through the holiday season. I just enjoy this side project so so so much. I wish it could be more front and center. But I also have a million other things I want to do. I’m sewing a new dress, almost finished with that though (I’ll put it up when it’s done), I would love to get an etsy store up and running, and I’m working on rewriting my old children’s book from before (see portfolio pages for a sneak peak on that-although some of those may need to change with the rewrite) and am currently in the rough draft stage… and it is going slowly because I keep procrastinating- bad Frona. I will be better. But anyway, here is the second illustration for The Hobbit Project.
Belladonna Took and Bungo Baggins
I have started the second illustration for The Hobbit Project. It is still a work in progress and is taking longer than I would like because I have been sick lately. For this illustration I have chosen to show a portrait of Bilbo’s mother and father, Belladonna Took and Bungo Baggins. I imagine this double portrait was painted when they were young, perhaps shortly after they were married.
When I go to paint these two, I believe I will forgo the usual line work in the portrait itself to show it as a painting in this world. I am perhaps overthinking, but such is life… either that or throwing all caution to the wind and not thinking at all.
Admittedly, I have been apprehensive, perhaps even a touch nervous to move past the sketch phase. I am haunted by a portrait I gave as a wedding present about ten years ago, although it is safe to say I have improved since then, in skill and knowledge, also the materials I now use are far superior to those of the past. I have considered repainting it for them for an anniversary so I may stamp the ugly thing from memory. But I digress, I decided I would go into my Character Practice board on Pinterest, find an interesting face and practice first. This would also give me a chance to try out my new color palette
The page opposite are some notes I have taken detailing a rough estimation on how much watercolor paper it will take to complete my endeavor and if I keep going as I have been…. how long it will take. Which after I finished my estimating, I had a good laugh…..
Roughly 23 signatures of 928 pages front and back. (Of course this includes watercolor paper and a much thinner writing paper to keep down unnecessary cost and thickness) It will be anywhere from 6.5 to 7 inches thick including the binding… aaaaand drum roll please…. if this continues on as a side project in my sparest of time it will take anywhere from 11.5-12 years to complete. But what a thing it will be, and time flies. Who knows, some day I may be able to make it my main focus. But I am having a wonderful time with it for now.
Here is the newest from the Hobbit Project. I had some trouble with it mostly because the paper, I have discovered isn’t worth a damn, at least not on both sides of it… which I suppose isn’t that uncommon and it is a little cheaper than ye olde Arches which I have never had any problem with regardless of what side I’m painting on. Anyway, I have thrown out all that other paper and have replaced it with Arches, because it is the best, and it’s hard to work with anything less than after that.
I also did a ton of color studies for this one because I was feeling super indecisive.
Just a bunch of subtle differences… but I haven’t done color studies in forever and it was kind of fun to delve into them and play with all the possibilities.
Admittedly, my drawing has been sparse of late so I decided that I would use one of my favorite books from childhood as a prompt. I plan on going through the book and doing an illustration for every page… or two. This will give me the opportunity to draw and paint several kinds of characters, landscapes, and architectures. It will be excellent practice for world building in my own projects and I couldn’t be more excited.
This is the first one. It’s the title page featuring Baggend in the spring.
Here are a couple of major sewing projects I did over the summer…. The pumpkin dress and the galaxy ocean dress.
I took a little break from chores and rewriting my story to work in my sketchbook just a bit. I am going through this phase where I am playing around with the idea of different gigantic animals and what their personalities would be like.
As you may or may not know I have always been interested in creating a graphic novel. In order for that “someday” to actually become a reality I decided I should probably make some sort of move in that direction. There is a lot I have to figure out, but here is a small step in that direction. As far as an actual graphic novel goes I don’t have a story that I want to tell yet. At this point I am thinking it might be a good idea to start with an adaptation of something that already exists… which I usually feel is a little gimmicky trick for marketing and sales, however, I feel like if it was the right story, it could be done well…. and this may end up being something that never lands on a publisher’s desk. It may just end up being something for practice until I find my own story to tell.
A Cozy Spot
I tried scanning this instead of just taking a picture, and I don’t know what it is about acrylics that I just can’t seem to get right, even when I fuss with them in photoshop. Oh well, I’ll try again when it’s finished. I have finished filling in the background. At first I thought it would require glazing layers of different color to get it where I want it, and I still may eventually do that, however right now I kind of like it. I started repainting some of the foliage and the flowers. On that note, I am not totally pleased with the placement of some of the flowers and may rearrange them a bit (I need more yellow flowers)…. something that is way more doable now that I have decided to paint them in acrylic… All in all it is an improvement. I am still only futzing around with this cover in my free time, but it makes for some fun progress, or at least I think it does. I do hate working in acrylic though and I am ready to go back to my beloved watercolor. Oil would be much more enjoyable to work with but holy moly it would just never dry, and I am just too impatient for that, so acrylic it is.
As you might remember I wasn’t completely pleased with my sketchbook cover so I decided on a whim yesterday to start painting over the top of it in acrylic… I knew I held on to these paints for a reason. I’ve started on the first layer in the background… which is a little more blue than I want… but its a good place to start. It seems to me that it doesn’t matter what media you are using, it always looks more lively the more layers you have..
Although it isn’t quite the color I want, I do believe it is an improvement as all the little details are starting to come out of the background.
I do a little more whenever I have a chance. My goal is to finish this first layer on the background this weekend.
This is an old sketchbook page that I actually salvaged from an older sketchbook from when I was in college. It was a loose page that I didn’t want to loose. This Sloth was from a series of animals that drew in 50’s garb. In fact, I just drew animals in place of the original model or actress that was already wearing it. This is a project I would like to revisit some day.
Looking at this now it makes me wonder if wookiees were heavily influenced by sloths…
Here is the full page…. I still haven’t finished making that journal for my mom. It was going to be a bit of an experiment, and the contraption that I needed to build, well, I need to build it again.
It was fun to make up my own cryptozoology creature. I just was looking at the river one day and was thinking what kind of creature would be invisible in this seaweed environment… and this is what I came up with.
A mixture of ink and watercolor.. I used a fountain pen and a brush pen…. which I really enjoy using, I would like to work that brush pen into the mix more often!
I took an image from Pinterest. I believe it is in Iceland. I tried to make the picture my own. I am still working out some different things in painting landscapes, and I still need more practice although I think I need to go back to drawing people for a while. I am starting to feel out of practice. Although I am also not very good at practicing. I should practice practicing.
Iceland sketch
Here’s a slightly different angle.. in case it makes it look more interesting.
I was mainly trying to figure out floral patterns and placement here.
I was looking at a couple different things here. I was playing with composition and experimenting with how this paper reacted to watercolor paint.
A colorful doodle and some planning for how I was going to deal with my sketchbook falling apart last summer. I also threw in some clipping of different places that I thought were pretty and inspiring.
These were tracings of the original drawings I did for a couple of botanicals that I will eventually get back to. Someday I would like to use these to create a collage with colored paper. I think it would be a fun experiment that might turn out really cool. Or it could be a disaster, who knows?
This was actually supposed to go in the first post, but I must have overlooked it, whoops. Here is a rhino I thoroughly enjoyed drawing a few years ago
So there you go, a few more images from flipping through the old sketchbook.
After rebinding my sketchbook last July, I finally got around to decorating the cover, so no more rollin’ around with a plain old cardboard cover! To be honest it looked better before I sprayed Crystal Clear on it, but I wanted to protect all my hard work. Everything just got a bit darker, especially with the teal background. It all but disappeared. It’s okay though.. it was something of an experiment anyway and it is just a sketchbook. The idea is there though. I am thinking about recreating it on watercolor paper…. maybe…. We shall see!
Yep….. I have done everything I can possibly think of to get the link to Instagram to continuously update. It will work fine for a while and then… BAM…that’s it. To be honest I am probably just doing it wrong, so my plan is to do a catch up post to start everything out and then just keep it up. It could be an interesting exercise to chronicle everything in this way, although I am not the first and I know I won’t be the last. Here are a few highlights from the last few years.
This was inspired by a challenge from a fountain pen company that I knew I wanted to come back to when I had more time.
I spent days sewing this for a hat band… unfortunately my dog found it before I could put it to use and destroyed it. Someday I will make it again and it will be even better the second time around. Don’t worry, the dog still lives, we just didn’t talk for a couple of days.
A drawing in Silverpoint of me and my grandfather. I am looking forward to seeing how it tarnishes as it ages.
This is an Indian Paintbrush that I painted as an ode to my childhood in Texas. I have two more in the works that I plan as part of a series I want to call Texas Flowers.
A couple of pages from my current sketchbook where I was experimenting with clouds in watercolor and playing with a few techniques.
This is another experiment where I used some of the things I learned in the above images….. Couldn’t help but include my fancy paintbox that I made in this shot.
This is a Mongolian Warrior that I sketched from one of my reference books.
Just adding a bit of detailing to a skirt I got from a thrift store and changed almost everything about it…. Can I claim I made it that point? I just utilized the foundation…. anyway, it is one of my favorite skirts now.
I know people aren’t “supposed” to see the thumbnails and the ugly sketches but sometimes there is a charm in them that the final image doesn’t have, but also there is something special about holding on to where the idea started and how it grew…. or flopped as the case may be sometimes.
I enjoy injecting a bit of humor into my images, even if it does only amuse me in the end… and oh how I struggled with how to do the mint delivery system and whether or not to use Mentos as imagined or to play it safe and put Mintos… in the end perhaps I should have thrown caution to the wind and kept it a cannon… but that is what photoshop is for…. nothing has to be final ever again.
No sketchbook is complete without a fuzzy lovable carnivore baby.
Some process work of an image from my children’s book that I haven’t given up on getting published some day. You can see this one completed in my portfolio. I decided to include many of the images from this story in my portfolio because it was almost all I worked on for a couple of years.
I bound my current sketchbook in October 2018 and started into the first of 400 pages right away. This thing is going to last forever…. well sort of the binding unfortunately started to fail so I had to painstakingly take it apart and rebind it this past summer. It barely fits into the leather cover now but at least the spine shouldn’t break down now.
A fresh new spine before it loosened it up from use.