One of my favorite things about being a parent is listening to the stories my daughter makes up and really trying to encourage her imagination. She has named a bunch of the cacti which line our windowsills, while our cacti are very accustomed to their suburban lives they also like a bit of adventure, this is a group of them taking a family vacation to the desert.
In an attempt to be much more consistent with my drawing practice (and to tackle my insecurities about showing people my drawings) I am hoping that posting some of my sketches online will help keep me accountable. So day 1 sketch, I managed to find a very cheap used college set of Rotring Rapidograph pens online, when they arrived today I was delighted to see that they had NEVER been used! After a bit of a happy dance I got a couple of the pens assembled and started to figure out how they work. This is a quick sketch on tracing paper not that I was tracing anything I just need to invest in better paper with less tooth to be able to use these pens without having ink flow issues.
This is the book I made which contains the educational paper I wrote and illustrated about my trip to China in the summer of 2017. I gave a lecture entitled, The Sketchbook: Let's Connect at ICON10, The Illustration Conference in Detroit, MI this past July. I gave a few of these books out along with pocket sketchbooks to the audience. Below are a few spreads from the 40-page book.
Painting, drawing, crayoning, markering (I just made that word up)...it's always more fun when a child is involved, even when they purposefully color over a character. It adds character to the character, no?
The second set of pages from my trip to China last summer. Spent time in Beijing and Hong Kong and hiking/camping out on a portion the Great Wall. Truly amazing.
