colored and 'carbon sketch' pencils on mailing envelope, 3" x 4"

a quick post about something that inspired me last week...   colored pencils on brown paper.

i was attempting to draw the figure in this gorgeous vera rockline painting,

colored pencil on cereal box, peter rush

inspired by colored pencil sketches on cereal boxes that i saw on tumblr.

colored pencil on cereal box, peter rush

they're drawn by peter rush...  at first i thought they were drawn using soft pastels, but no, it's the humble colored pencil!  you can read a great interview with peter on the urban sketcher's blog, where he contributes.

colored and 'carbon sketch' pencils on mailing envelope

all of my drawings are done on a mailing envelope that i received a few days after i saw peter's sketches...  

 i've paper clipped them to a page in my homemade strathmore journal.   there's lots of space between the signatures of a book

 bound like this.  it makes sticking in extra stuff easy.

and in case you don't know about the 'carbon sketch' pencil that i used, it's part graphite, part charcoal, and pure smudging bliss...

of course now i wanna find some empty cereal boxes, and i'm also considering buying a pad of strathmore's toned tan paper...  if you know of other brands of toned paper, i'd love to hear about them.

untitled ~ watercolors, old paper, oil pastels and graphite on stathmore 400 watercolor paper, 3 1/2" x 51/2"

after my post in july about drawing, i bought 'the drawing mind' by deborah putnoi.   i remember that i read it cover to cover and did most of the exercises,

and somewhere in there drawing stopped seeming like a big deal or intimidating in any way.   looking back, i think "now what was the problem?", ha! 

painted muslin cover on strathmore 400 watercolor paper journal

at about the same time i saw a tutorial on gwen diehn's blog for making a journal with paper from a strathmore pad and a rice bag.   i had the paper but not the rice bag, so i substituted muslin that i painted. i tore each sheet from the strathmore 400 watercolor pad into four pieces, which i then folded in half.  this gave me 3 1/2" x 5 1/2" pages.

i have *loved* working in this book!    the good thing (or one of the good things) about strathmore 400 watercolor paper is that you can put loads of water on it and it will not buckle.  

with my newfound drawing freedom and a small book with heavy watercolor paper in it, i was happy....   i felt like the guy on the left page.  : )

these are some early pages from the book. 

 the paper is very white, so i put a wash of warm grey or raw sienna on a lot of the pages.

realizing how important small page size was to me, i also bought a pocket rhodia webbie for pencil and colored pencil drawings at about this time.  the paper is ivory and super smooth...

lately i've been using neo-color II crayons in it instead of colored pencils...   it's another great place to draw and play with color.

on top of all this wondrousness, i also (thanks to galia), got 'water, paper, paint', by heather smith jones.  this book expanded my watercolor horizons manyfold.  suddenly i saw new ways to express myself with watercolors...

these are some of the  paintings i've done in the pocket moleskine watercolor book that i got after i filled the book in the last post. 

i've been using masking tape to cover up stuff i don't like, and then painting/drawing on top of it.

unlike the little book in the last post, which i only worked in when i was outside, i work in this book inside and out. 

i *like* landscape orientation now, something i never thought would happen!

i've been practicing painting faces using only watercolors - no colored pencil, oil pastels, etc.

one thing that i thought might be worth sharing is the greys i use (besides payne's grey, which i don't think of as a grey, but some kind of paint magic).   i use these greys more than any other color/s...  left to right: sennelier warm grey, sennelier grey (a dark green grey), and holbein gouache grey #2.

this is where my drawing - and painting - journey stands now.  thank you to everyone who commented on my july drawing post; i enjoyed hearing your thoughts...   as for erwin lian and 'the perfect sketchbook', he exceeded his kickstarter goal, thanks to the support of many artists.

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“Stop thinking about artworks as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences.” 

~ Brian Eno, "On Art"