Inspired by a fortune teller’s symbol, this painted wooden hand went into the Gypsies, Vagabonds & Wild Mad Women exhibition. These photos were taken before I’d finished…later on, I added the words “Here & Now” to the golden circle in the center of the palm.
Red and black horses, symbols from Russian folk art, run around the base of the arm. Traditionally, they represent Day and Night.
The cottage is made of various papers. The frilly roof was fun to make.
Tongue-in-cheek painting I made for fun, and to use up extra paint. It was among the first to go at the Gypsies, Vagabonds & wild Mad Women exhibition. East and West got swapped the wrong way…
In the second part of our homework for Sketchbook Skool under Brian Butler, we had to use the same “one from column A, one from column B” way of generating interesting images, but this time using iconic symbols/images from “My Favorite Place”.
He encouraged us to imagine a mini-golf course.
I decided on a still life of the usual things on my desk (a shout out to being back in Oz, at home) and paired each object up with something from one of the countries visited between 2014-2016. By the time I got to the end, things had moved around a bit, I added bits…it took on a life of its own, which is always a good thing (and a relief).
Thus ends Week 3 of Sketchbook Skool. Every Monday I get online hoping that we’ll have Felix Scheinberger, next. I wonder if he’ll be next week’s teacher? So exciting!
Last week in Sketchbook Skool, Brian Butler took us along to rock concerts to watch him sketch on the dance floor, and then we went for a walk around the neighbourhood to generate site-specific ideas for a mural in downtown Los Angeles.
His system for generating ideas by writing a list of adjectives in one column, a list of nouns in the other column—and then randomly combining a word from each column—called to mind my own exercises in imagination by drawing two or three slips of paper from a cup, and then creating a hybrid image from the words.
CHICKEN FEET + POTS was my first attempt to do the homework Brian gave us. PERFUME + FOOD was the second.
Week 2 at Sketchbook Skool was led by Nina Johanssen. She’s an urban sketcher, and took us for a tour of her sketchbooks. We watched over her shoulder as she sat in a park and painted some buildings.
I came down with the flu this week, and was also filling my manager’s shoes at work while she took 2 weeks off, so all the homeowork I managed to do for this week was a quick sketch of my neighbourhood, from the back deck of my own boat. Oh, well, I did plenty of urban sketching during my travels, so it’s nothing new.
