Ireland Sketchbook

At the beginning of October my family returned from a two week trip to the western coast of Ireland. My father is in an American folk band, Betty & the Baby Boomers, who have been traveling to Clifden, Ireland for the past 20 years to play music in their Annual Arts Festival. We spent the first week in Clifden, going to concerts, plays, poetry readings and art talks in pubs and theaters. The second week we traveled north up the coast to Donegal.

 

I brought a small 4 x 6 watercolor sketchbook I took everywhere and promised myself I would fill. I made it about 50% of the way through, but I'm still happy. It's more loose sketching than I would normally do in two weeks time. So here's a selection of sketches from the trip.

Grand Manan Sketches

My family recently returned from our annual pilgrimage up to Grand Manan Island in the Bay of Fundy. Nine hours in a car and another hour and a half on a ferry really pay off for a week of true relaxation in an incredibly beautiful place.

Flock of Sheep hike on the southeast side of the island.

Since we've gone so many years (something crazy, like the last 15 years) there's nothing really new to see. It takes something really extraordinary for us pull out our cameras anymore. But this year I decided to try and do a better job sketching some of it. I don't pride myself on my landscape skills, but it was nice to have time to just noodle around in my sketchbook.

White Head Island

Grand Manan Rock Books

Every summer my family and a few friends make our pilgrimage up to the island of Grand Manan off the coast of New Brunswick in the Bay of Fundy. A fairly small and quiet island, Grand Manan is unbelievably scenic with panoramic ocean views, sheer cliffs, and long rock beaches. We rent out several cabins right on the edge of a marsh overlooking the ocean and, totally devoid a wireless connection, we spend our week reading, playing cards, hiking, picnicking and of course, drawing and painting. But one of our favorite past time is collecting rocks. It may sound pretty lame, but the rocks found around the Grand Manan archipelago are unlike any other. Just look at what I mean:

In honor of our overwhelmingly large rock collection (my mother actually has started returning some to the island), I decided to make a few little sketchbooks for my traveling companions.

Each book is decorated with some rocks drawn in pencil, sealed in wheat paste and bound up with some nice linen thread in durable book cloth. My great friend (and shameless plug: excellent writer) Celeste started hers right away with a few watercolors.

Literary Carry - Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

This Literary Carry contains all the items listed on a first year acceptance letter to Hogwarts. Every student begins their journey with the same set of items.

This Years Reading List

I spent this weekend wrapping up a few outstanding pages in my sketchbooks. One was this ongoing list of all the new books I have read this year. I did some little watercolor thumbnails of the cover of each once I had finished reading it. There's a full list of titles and authors after the jump.

Butterfly in the Sky...or on my Bulletin Board

I feel like every time I put up a new post I am prefacing it with 'it's been a busy _______.' But really, it has been. There's still plenty of art getting produced, just never enough time at the end of the day to put it on the internet. This week I'm going to try and play a little catch up. And it will begin with my most recent project, a butterfly collection.

No that's not mine silly, that's from the Manitoba Museum.

I always have found butterfly collections beautiful but also a bit morbid cause those are dead butterflies. And I never knew, did they kill them just to pin them up? Because that doesn't seem quite right to me. So I decided to make a vegan cruelty-free butterfly collection. I have drawn many pages of butterflies and know am on to the painting process. Once they are all done I will cut them out and pin them into a shadow box or frame.

Here's a few sketches...

 

All the tape is there because I would draw one side of the butterfly and then trace it on tracing paper and just flip it over, cause symmetry's a pain.

Life of Pi - Literary Carry

I promised this would go up for Memorial Day weekend and then I spent all week being sick. So I had to play some catch up, so here is my catalog of what Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel, found in his lifeboat after a shipwreck.

Definitely click to view larger...

My Father's Dragon - Literary Carry

One of my favorite books growing up was My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett with illustrations by Ruth Chrisman Gannett. This is just a little painting I did the other day cataloging all the things Elmer Elevator took on his adventure to rescue the dragon.

Definitely click to view larger...

I liked the idea quite a bit, it was fun to see all laid out what the contents of his backpack were. So now I am working on another painting of all the the things Pi found in his lifeboat in Life of Pi which should go up this weekend.

These are some of the beautiful original illustrations, done in grease crayon on a grained paper.

Flowers, Plants, and Leaves

Lately I have been trying to work on some designs for patterns, though I can't say I am progressing forward very quickly. Basically just been sketching bunches of flowers, plants and leaves. So here are just some drawings that will hopefully become something later...

 

 

Traveling Across These 50 United States

I was inspired over the weekend by this awesome map I found Etsy, made by Ello There Wedding Invitations & Print Shop run and created by Maddy & Seth Lucas:

I loved their map to help you track which of the national parks you've been to across the United States. I wanted to make my own map of places I had been around the country, so I tooled around in my sketchbook and came up with this:

 

Probably worth looking at big.

Visit Maddy & Seth's blog here: ellotheredesign.blogspot.com 

And their Etsy shop here: www.etsy.com/shop/ElloThere  

 

A Trip to the Arboretum

A little while ago, a few friends and I went to the Arnold Arboretum to do some drawing. While it really just evolved into us hanging around, enjoying the great weather I also did try and get a little bit of drawing. Isn't it always the way...

 

A New Book!

Unfortunately with my lack of time, I can't invest in content for my books, so I have been mostly just designing outside covers. But I helped teach a small book binding class a few nights ago, so small in fact, I had time to bind together my own small book. I had forgotten how much I missed it. I have been writing down and sketching ideas for other, more fleshed out books I want to work on, so hopefully I will be able to get to that soon, but for now...

The cover is white colored pencil and ink on Canson paper.
The paper on the inside is assorted Arches watercolor paper and other drawing papers.

The Sea of Tea Sketchbook

My decline in posts has been due to a two and half week trip to Scotland and London and a severe lack of internet in my apartment. So here's quite a few pages from Scotland, with more to come:

Some Sketchbook Pages

Both are crayon resists done with watercolor and some pencil.

Ever since I came home for the summer I haven't had a scanner and it makes recording my work a lot harder. These were done with a camera so they're a bit fuzzy but get the idea across.