Welcome! Yes, I know it's been a long time since I posted here. Life's been busy. . . I just got back from a trip to Oregon last week where we made plans for next year's Copic classes. We were fortunate to have Ken O'Connell (President of Imagination International, Professor Emeritus from the University of Oregon, and inspirational sketchbook-keeper extraordinaire, among other things) teach us a brief class on sketching. (Ken's blog is here, and I found an interesting article about his sketches here.)
Ken walked into the room with a handful of radishes and announced that we would all be sketching them, then handed out a few Copic markers and multiliners. (Thankfully, I had brought 72 of my own Copic markers with me, along with my Gray 0.3 multiliner, just in case!) He gave us about 10-15 minutes to sketch the radish in front of us in ink--no pencil under-drawing. This is mine, and I discovered something: if I'm sketching in ink rather than pencil followed by clean ink lines, I'm less uptight about perfection. I know that it won't be perfect, and I can live with that. If I sketch in pencil first, I'm much more careful about the ink lines and the entire piece. Hmmm. . .
Next, he had us draw a rectangle about the size of two packs of cards, then sketch the radish again, touching the form to all sides, and extending past the edge with one piece of the radish. After we did that, he said that we should color only the negative space (in this case, the parts that are not the radish), in two different hues. You know how I love my Blue-Violets and Blue-Greens, right?
Finally, he told us to do one more quick sketch and then add color to the radish and to least one leaf.
Oh, and one more thing. . . those funny little people! He gave us a quick lesson on sketching people with very few strokes and told us to sketch two or three people looking at our radish. (Yes, I know that three would be more pleasing visually, but I hated to mess up my painterly-looking radish!) What did I learn? It is not a newly learned thing, but more like a long misplaced lesson: you don't have to spend HOURS on something for it to be worthwhile. And you don't have to have time to make it photographic before you sketch. I like my 10-20 minutes sketches. In fact, they feel fresher than some of the ones that I've labored over for hours and hours. Maybe less is more sometimes?
All Copic colors used are listed on the sketches. I'm headed to Lansing for both Copic Standard and Intermediate classes this coming weekend. The Standard is pretty full, but the Intermediate still has room if you are interested. Thanks for visiting!
Debbie
