It's sketchbook wednesday....on friday. Thanks for grace!

 pencil drawing. my boy running down the dunes on a windy day. over and over and over. such fun! (wow. drawing sand dunes is super hard).

 charcoal drawing. kite flying with the littlest one. I quite like charcoal for large scale drawing but found using it in on this teeny tiny page very challenging and wasn't too happy with the result... but I got sick of it and gave up! ha!

this is a pencil drawing adapted from one of my favourite photos of my son. I usually hate working from photos (because the process is so lifeless and restrictive and the result is often flat) but thought I'd give it a go....for something different. I actually don't mind the adaptation and it sure is a quick way to work!

sketchbook wednesday

I've been really bad at keeping up with posting a page or two from my sketchbook every wednesday, but I'm am going to work on that!!  So here's a few pages from my summer holiday sketchbook....that really started as sketches but are becoming more and more illustrative. Ha. It's fun playing around with different things. 

So the process was to start with rough gestural sketches, with only a B pencil(so it's nice and light) then work over them refining and erasing (I never use an eraser!!)  with 4B, 5B and 8 B to add just a teeny about of tonal highlights but mainly good sharp edges and outlines....and then getting a clean and tidy drawing at the end.

I usually prefer a much more loose and sketchy style and I fear that these are becoming a little too 'cartoony'....but hey, it's a sketchbook...the place where you experiment and push and pull your drawing  and style and processes in all sorts of direction without the pressure of what is right, wrong, better or worse...it just is what it is.

 I love that about a sketchbook. It doesn't judge me.

Also, I guess this more illustrative approach was perhaps the best expressions of the subject-  a record of a summer of childhood memories.