Today child #1, child #3 and I went to take a class in travel journaling with Donna Naes. This was her “materials list” – isn’t it beautiful? Being such a visual person myself a list like this really speaks to me.
Another example of Donna’s work. She teaches outdoors a lot. Among other exercises she uses a “timed exercise”, where the students sketch for a very short time to capture only what is essential.
Every now and again in my life I have made an attempt to do this everyday-journaling, where you sit down and actually draw/sketch something, just a small amount of time. And every now and again I stop doing it, although I always love the results of a visual journal. When this class came up at Craftology I thought it was time to revive the daily sketching, and take my son and daughter with me, who are both a) interested to learn these things and b) have a basic talent when it comes to art. Which, in all fairness, applies to my other daughter, too, but she opted to go horse-back riding instead.
For a long time I have admired the pen-and-ink work of Danny Gregory, make sure to check out his blog! Another one of my favorites is D. Price, a little lot whackier than Gregory, but highly inspiring in a lot of aspects. Well, Donna’s work and style is absolutely comparable to both of these artists – and she had a ton of enthusiasm and energy as a teacher. I loved it!
One of the other participants, who was more leaning towards classic watercolor as opposed to pen-and-ink sketching:
Lacking the great outdoors in a studio setting, we were asked to pick out an image from a pile of National Geographic magazines and set to work. My daughter worked on a desert landscape:
My son opted for a quite complex photograph with shiny and reflecting surfaces of all kinds:
I picked a picture from an article about recycling, changed its format a bit to long and skinny, didn’t draw ALL the canisters, but was still happy with the result:
I feel very inspired and have high hopes to pursue a daily sketch from now on, with my journal maybe on the kitchen counter, always in reach.
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