I know this isn't entirely sketchbook-related, but I thought I'd share my charcoal drawing for an album cover I just did for a friend's musical group in NYC last weekend because I'm really excited about it. It also did start of as a bunch of sketches on top of one another. The image will undergo some editing in Adobe Photoshop to smooth out the tiny white dots that resulted from the highly textured paper I used. No more textured paper for album covers. That was a silly idea.

by the pool

it's more fun when you really have some time to draw. Here is my sketch from florida.

Boston Public Library Sketchbooks

This morning was thrilled to have the opportunity to speak with Karen Shafts, Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the Boston Public Library. Karen was kind enough to share with me a nice selection of sketchbooks by such artists as Edmund Whitefield, Robert McClusky (author of the notable children's book Make Way for Ducklings), Peter Scott (Professor in the Print and Paper Area of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts), Hiram Merrill and Toulouse Lautrec. Plus a "mystery" sketchbook acquired from Gallery Naga some years ago. It was great to see how these artists used their sketchbooks as diaries, notebooks, daily routine journals, travel logs and study logs. McClusky's sketchbook (well, more like a sketchpad) was full of ducks ducks ducks! Preening, waddling, sleeping, eating... Whitefield included dates and times of meetings, train schedules, etc. Merrill included pressed and dried leaves and flowers for later use in watercolor paintings.

As this is a public collection, anyone can make an appointment to see these things in the BPL collection.

my favorite sketch-practice

< This was my old sketchbook cover.

I like to collage a lot, so I experimented with a kind of drawing collage.. I was on a road trip from California to Boston over several months with tons of down time, so my rules for this practice were to find something interesting (if not many things) in every place I happened to be in and integrate them all together. here are a few from an that old sketch book:

What I like about this way is that I allow myself to acknowledge the little details i'm so drawn to without feeling obligated to put down the entire scene that its in . It was also a good excercise in composition and arranging a picture for me.