ISPsketchers

Welcome Sketchers and visitors!  This site exists as a venue for ISP Faculty Sketchbook Exchange participants to share their sketchbook entries.  Currently we consist of 20 participants divided into a couple groups.

Right now (2011/12) we’re running a second round of this project. While you can share and see our fresh work, you may also see our achievements from last year’s exchange.

Sketchers, please remember half of the excitement of this project is seeing what everyone else is doing, so please post your sketches and comments on your own work and others as you wish.  Please use the instructions page for posting considerations and help.

For our visitors, we’re glad you made it to our site and we hope you enjoy the work.

I tried something new…

Stephen’s book is thematically wrapped around a rather deep narrative along the lines of “unfolding your own myth”. I truly believe that one should always try to listen to his heart – as much as one can within circumstances.

Flip the heart to see what’s on the inside.

It took quite a while to arrive at the design itself and to figure out the technical process but using quite a few layers of paper and tracing paper in simple shapes made it happen.

Friday June 8 / 15:15 / ISP Library

Our completed sketchbooks on display!

Avis has a theme of “Memories of Asia.” Sadly, I’ve never been to Asia, so I had to invent some memories. I don’t know why my invented memories are so wistful…I just like old faded things and the suggestion of some lost romantic place.

Tony’s book has no set theme.

Tony’s book also features cats a couple times and so does Nikki’s sweet entry – and so I simply decided to get some cats into my contribution too. The dinosaur made it in on request of my 4 years old son who’s a great dinosaur lover right now. And the rest is just a flow of ideas as they came. I thoroughly enjoyed working on this entry as it allowed me to just let things out on paper without developing ideas or concepts in too much depth and detail.

Cycling the Moselle

Andrea’s theme was travel. I went on a cycling trip in April. When I came back I gathered up all the information I had collected and tried to make a pop up collage. In my piece I wanted to capture what it was like to cycle the Moselle River in Germany alongside the castles and vineyards.

The first piece that Becky posted reminded me of quilting, and so I decided that was what I was going to try. Karen and Beata dove into their scrap bags to provide me with the raw materials to make my mini quilt, and after much indecision about the pieces, the result is as shown.

Becky’s theme was images from the past. Focusing on images from my childhood allowed me to reminisce about the things that were familiar and comforting about growing up.

Mountains, holidays in caravans, Mam knitting, autumn trees, old men sat on doorsteps, 99 ice-cream cones, mad budgies, games in the street, watching thunder and lightning storms with Da, playing around on our bikes, reading books, and playing snap with Nan.

Childhood images

“Attach words to your art” is Nikki’s guideline for this book.

It’s been long since I put down notes from books I read – yet just recently I read a brilliant book by Karen Russell – Swamplandia!

The language killed me. There were passages in the text that in my head translated into visuals right on. Such as …

“Ossie said a spirit’s voice was as fine as a needle tattooing her insides with luminous words.” (p157)

4 layers of tracing paper featuring drawing, painting, photoshop work & spray paint

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Fantasycastlelandscape

Thumbing through Tony’s book (then asking to make sure) I found no discernible theme, so I went with what I was working on at the time outside of school. Three friends of mine and I are writing/drawing a book to submit to publishers, targeting upper elementary and middle school students to cultivate their imagination. One activity we have is called The Scribble, and here is a sample of the spread:

So I decided to do the activity myself. Using a black pen I incorporated mechanical pencil and eraser to blend in John Y.’s previous drawing along with shading, texturing, and miscellaneous inset sketches. After I completed, I let Jackson have a hand in making a scribble, and he chose to use the color red. This is the result, vertical and with a bit of John’s piece:

Is it a tree? No!!!

Fracked Fractal

OK – so this is accidental “art”. This will be a long story – sorry!

So, originally I had the idea to do a tree through the seasons and I wanted to do it in fabric – I feel comfortable in textiles, even though I haven’t done anything since I was a teenager.
So I had everything, felt, a new super cute mini sewing machine – but everything became difficult, the felt wouldn’t lay right, the sewing machine didn’t like that the felt had glue on the back, etc, etc.

It's a Fracked Fractal!

Now, I finally got everything to

work, but didn’t have the template, so I cut out my trees by hand and, well, basically made up a new design, then sewed it and started playing around with making patterns in the tree. Took it out and thought – I don’t like it! It’s messy, not regular – that’s the mathematician in me.

So I went to throw it away, and as I was about to do so, I saw the negative (the accidental back side that gets created when you sew) and I liked it, a lot.
So, I played some more and what you get is no longer a tree, it could be a snowflake, or a nebula, but really it’s a fracked fractal.

Is it “art”? Don’t know and don’t care – It’s interesting and was a good journey for me whilst learning to use the “pixie plus”.

Thanks to Erin for reminding me of classic sci-fi dweeb terms.