Mini Travel Sketchbook Tour + Planning a Painting

September 3, 2018

Mini Sketchbook Flip-Through + Planning a Painting-2.png

Hi again! My second Studio Vlog! I had lots of fun collecting little snippets of my week and piling them together. It let me reflect and gave me a sense of what I accomplished in the week and what I should work on for the weeks ahead.

I continued to work on most of my projects for Thailand, including the travel sketchbook which you get a glimpse of in the video. There will be a time-lapse video of how I filled out a spread coming soon, as well as a full sketchbook tour when I am completely done! (Which probably won't be for a while, I'm not even close to being done with it yet! 😬🤷🏽‍♀️).

I also started to plan out a painting for my own apartment by mocking it up in my sketchbook - I plan to start on it in the next few weeks. There are two separate canvases hanging over my sofa with maps of various European cities that I collected during my travels that are shellacked onto them. I plan on putting a wash of white over them so the maps are still visible and painting vintage objects that relate to my interests (photography, art, travel). I will be filming a video of me working on them separately.

I hope you enjoy, and feel free to subscribe to be the first to know when I upload! :)

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The Brooklyn Sketchbook Project

May 20, 2018

ABOUT THE PROJECT

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Project started: August 4th, 2017

Project completed: April 28th, 2018

I have just completed The Sketchbook Project, an assignment ran by the Brooklyn Art Library in New York. This is a project that takes place worldwide by whoever wishes to join.

The requirements for The Sketchbook Project is to completely fill out the sketchbook and send it to the Brooklyn Library in New York City by March 2018 (update: the deadline was pushed to April 30th). There, it will be included in the library's permanent collection so anyone can check out and enjoy mine, or someone else's sketchbook.

The inspiration that is behind the illustrations in this sketchbook comes from food. I always come across pictures where you know someone had to have stood on their restaurant chair to get the bird's eye camera shot of their dinner spread. Viewers absolutely love food photography (as long as the food looks appetizing), so why not get involved with the trend by creating drawings and paintings of these delicious creations?

I decided to participate in this project to not only get more involved with the artist community, but also because of the concept behind it. Currently, I am an independent artist who works on personal and freelance projects out of her home; so more often than not, it can get quite lonesome being on my own. With this project, I am participating with hundreds (maybe thousands?) of other people from around the world to have a sketchbook of mine sitting on the shelf of the Brooklyn Library next to other aspiring artists.

Keep scrolling to see every spread, as well as read about the stories that inspired every page!

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Here you can find the playlist for the time lapse videos I recorded of the project. Enjoy!

SKETCHBOOK TOUR

It took me 9 months to complete this sketchbook, which to me, is a bit long for how small the sketchbook is. At the beginning of the book, I wanted to start off with a cover page to introduce those who will be viewing this by including my name as well as an old business card in case they wanted to look at more of my work. The cheeseburger was the first thing I thought of, and I really love writing in graffiti style font, so I thought that this would be a fun way to start off the sketchbook.

This spread was dedicated to pizza. I do not have a specific favorite dish (because I can't decide!), but being from Chicago, pizza is definitely near the top of the list. We make handsdown the best pizza... okay, I may be a little biased... NYC gives us a run for our money, but I can argue that we definitely have the best deep dish pizza!

This spread was inspired by my generation, or more so... the man claiming that my generation cannot afford to buy a house because we spend too much money on avocado toast. It sounds dramatic, and hilarious when said as such, but it is actually an interesting article... give it a read.

At my day job, we host many happy hours at our office and we get to indulge in some wine and charcutterie. This kind of display has always been one of my favorites, as there are so many different colors, textures and flavors elegantly displayed.

I strongly believe that ice cream is one of the best foods ever created. There are so many different flavors to choose from and many of the combinations can be very unique. If you are ever in Chicago, you HAVE to try Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream. They are by far the best I have ever tasted.

My love for sweet treats continues in this spread with donuts and coffee! A funny story that inspired this is from my senior year of college, my roommate and I took a Pilates class to fulfill the minimum requirement to be a full-time student, and what stood between the subway stop and the classroom building was a Stan's Donuts & Coffee shop. We rewarded ourselves a few times after some intense classes.

To be completely honest with you, I cannot stand oysters. Their taste does not sit well with me as well as the texture and the way they are eating. But, I think they look really pretty! :)

Almost similar with oysters, I am not the first to suggest sushi for a meal, however when I am in the mood for it I like the classic California roll or Ahi tuna. However, the last time I had sushi was with some friends last summer at an all you can eat sushi restaurant. They way it worked was that for every piece of sushi left over, an extra $2 was added to your bill, so of course we had to eat everything that was put in front of us... I can't say that I had a desire to grab some sushi since then.

If you are from the Chicagoland area, you know exactly what Portillo's is. The tasty Chicago dogs, mouthwatering dipped Italian beef sandwiches (if you do not know what these are, you're missing out), crispy crinkle cut fries, and satisfying cake shake (yes, it has an actual slice of cake in it) are all things that I have been enjoying since my childhood.

A sip of sangria brings back so many memories, especially when I was studying in Barcelona. One particular time was back on the beach at a restaurant with one of my roommates. We each ordered a pitcher of sangria (which in our defence, was about three-ish drinks total). Upon ordering, the waiter gave us a strange look and said to us, "You know, in our country less is more." We both proceeded to commit to the pitchers and finished each of them with no problems. Might I also say that we walked out of that restaurant... not stumbled... :)

I like pancakes.

...and breakfast in general...

Even thought grilled cheese is one of the easiest things to make, my brother does a really good job of making it authentic. He hand shreds three different types of cheeses and grills it perfectly to to the crisp.

Now this is a weird guilty pleasure of mine... for a snack, I love pickles and peanut butter. I got the inspiration from somewhere, I just don't remember. But particularly I love the bread and butter slices with extra crunchy peanut butter. Give it a try before judging me. :)

Before I tried chicken and waffles, I did not understand at all why that combination would be good (says the person who loves her pickles with peanut butter). I tried it for the first time at the Chicken Shop at Soho House in Chicago. It was amazing to say the least...

This is the page I used to test sample swatches of water color as well as display my business card and social media information.

*** Flip-through video is coming soon!!

Sketchbook Tour

March 7, 2018

(Click play to watch the video above)

This is my first official sketchbook tour and I cannot be more excited to have completely finished this! It took me longer than I was planning, but at the end of the day, I wanted to go at my own pace and not stress out about this. I was using this sketchbook to get back into the swing of drawing and creating and experimenting with my art.

The sketchbook itself was given to me by my sister. She bought it from this hilarious shop out in Des Moines, Iowa called “RAYGUN.” The store has a bunch of apparel items, stationaries, and other trinkets that have really funny and sometimes brutally honest phrases on them. My sketchbook, in particular, says "Current Part-Time Struggling Artist, Future Full Time Struggling Artist."

As I said, this sketchbook was meant to be used for experimenting and not so much “finished pieces” so I was never originally planning on doing a sketchbook tour, but, about halfway through I decided to anyway because I love watching other artists on YouTube open up their sketchbooks for the world to see. To me, it’s kind of equivalent to someone opening up their diary and reading it out loud. But, I decided to take the plunge and put it out for the world to see.

There is nothing much to it besides process sketches, experimental paintings, scribbling to try out new art supplies, and even some similar drawings and paintings I tried to mimic from Instagram.

Feel free to watch the flip-through video, which is at the top of this post, or keep scrolling to see each page up close and personal.

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As I said earlier, my sister bought this for me from a store in Des Moines, Iowa. I'm crossing my fingers that this saying does not describe the fate of my future, but it does give me a good laugh. On the cover, the only thing I added was a sticker with my logo on the bottom right-hand corner.

Coming up with a cover page was tricky for me. I watched a ton of sketchbook tour videos on YouTube and a lot of them didn't have a solid starting point. I thought that overlaying a piece of kraft paper with a random saying and the dates of when I started the sketchbook and when I finished were a solid start.

I was going through a little funk when I drew this spread. The cliche analogy of a glass half empty or half full popped into my head, so I decided to draw it. I'm not sure what I was trying to accomplish with the man climbing up the ladder though. Maybe theres a diving board up there?

This spread has a couple of different layers to it. I was first practicing some calligraphy with my very first brush pen, and then came back to it months later to overlay a Polaroid photo of my art palette and some extra paint from a project I was working on.

I used this spread to test out some new washi tape and plan out the lettering for a sign hanging in my room, as well as experimenting with different patterns and textures.

This is probably my least favorite spread in the sketchbook. I totally abandoned this and got a little lazy by not completing a page of roses like I had planned, then proceded to fill up the other page by just adding stickers that I got from a new bracelet and lipstick I purchased a while back.

Pure irony. I grew up watching Star Wars and want to one day paint an incredible portrait of Darth Vader. I came across the sticker and had to add it to the spread to give the portrait a little story of my own. I then added my Rogue One and The Last Jedi tickets on the opposite page.

I have never taken a formal drawing class, and have seen many artists across the internet constantly draw figure studies. It is a practice that helps you improve on your skills, so I thought that I would give it a go.

I want to get better at drawing people - throughout college I pretty much just stuck with drawing perspectives and architectural drawings because that is what I went to school for, but I wish I drew people more often.

And as an homage to my college years, I took a break from drawing people and drew this perspective of the interior of a modern kitchen.

This was a quick spread. I used this for some scribbles and ideas for a tattoo design, as well as stuck a misprint of my avocado drawing from my Brooklyn Sketchbook Project series.

I kind of miss The Weeknd's old hair... it was an unusual style, but it was symbolic. So here is another attempt at drawing a more specific person, as well as including a lyric from one of his songs along with a couple of clippings from an art magazine.

This is another lazy spread with one of my misprints of a sketch I did while studying abroad in Barcelona.

I drew this house because I was inspired by one of my favorite artists, Semiskimmedmin (Minnie Small). This past October, she participated in a worldwide event called Inktober and created ink drawings different types of houses and what haunts them. My house didn't nearly turn out as great as what hers did, but since I used watercolor it didn't turn out as bold as what it would have if I used ink. Here is Minnie's playlist to her Inktober 2017 videos, definitely check them out! As for the photos of the dogs, I'll explain that in the next spread description...

These were reference photos of two dog portraits I illustrated for commission pieces. I was very happy with the end results, check them out here (along with other illustrations) if you are interested in seeing how they turned out!

And here are more photos of the puppers...

And here are some more photos of my niece pupper... I know, I'm looking like a crazy dog lady but in my defense, I was testing out my new Polaroid camera!

It was Thanksgiving, and at this point I was on my third Thanksgiving meal. I also tested out a new Pentel brush pen and Copic Sketching Markers as well as displaying a failed attempt of taking a polaroid photo of my Christmas tree.

Here are a few more tattoo designs I did for my sister and myself with a stripe of metallic washi tape.

More drawings of faces, one of which I was unhappy with the eyes, so I covered it up with paint. Another misprint of my travels when I was in Milan.

This was a brainstorming spread for a commissioned guitar painting I did around Christmas time. Check out the time-lapse video of the project here!

There isn't much of a story on this page - I bought some gold leaf paper and discovered that it is VERY difficult for me to apply. This also was an extention of the previous page for the abstract guitar painting.

A spread yet to be finished... I've recently become obsessed with these palm leaves and drawing them. I was inspired again by Semiskimmedmin to create an inverted drawing with black and white ink and paper.

A dream of mine is to one day have my own art studio. I jotted down a couple of notes, drew up floor plans and started a perspective of what I would like it to look like.

I came across this dude on Pinterest, I believe. I love sea animals, especially (octopuses?) (octopi?). The blue background is a mixture of primary cyan and primary white from my Holbein gouache paint set.

Here I did a couple of hand studies (also referenced from Pinterest), and then tried a more detailed inverted sketch using white gel pen and colored pencil. It turns out that I am pretty happy with how the drawings turned out because hands have always been difficult for me to draw.

The drawing sometimes makes my eyes hurt, but what led me to drawing this was a Skillshare class that I took online pertaining to finding your creative spark and the first lesson was to pick up whatever what was in front of you and just use it to create something. Once you had that object, just start letting it flow on the paper. Hours later, I ended up with zebra stripes so naturally I had to draw a zebra on the opposite page. The gel pen I used rubs off onto other pages easily, so I sealed it off with a coat of clear nail polish.

On this spread, I was hitting a creative block, so I drew what was in front of me; a handful of my art supplies.

This was a spread where I was having a hard time getting inspired, so I opened up a few magazines and clipped out images that I liked to create this collage.

I like Rhinos. They remind me of grumpy old men.

Here are a few more sketching exercises - I tried drawing some difference expressions in cartoon eyes, then I took a Copic sketching marker and drew random shapes. From those shapes, I created illustrations of what I saw and ended up with results that I was quite happy with.

I came across this illustration on Pinterest and immediately wanted to recreate it. I love how it turned out.

This spread is unfinished, but I liked the idea of this man from a magazine I found him in breathing out fire.

I am a succulent junkie. They are easy to take care of, and they add a fantastic vibe to a space.

This is another version of the mountain scape I illustrated a few spreads back. I used water color to create an ombre affect, finishing it off with white splatter paint to add a starry sky.

I've been reading this book on Urban Sketching because that is a technique that I would love to be able to do on my travels. They are very quick, look effortless and turn out to be amazing pieces of work. This view is that I attempted to quickly sketch is the view from my office in downtown, Chicago.

These are some plans for a DIY drawer to add under my vanity (left) and a DIY coffee table (right) which you see me filming on in my Sketchbook Tour Video.