Currently Browsing: Ears 69 articles
Breathing Room on the Page (or Page Spread)
One of the most important compositional tools you have in a visual journal or sketchbook is the breathing space on the page (or page spread). The negative space around an image helps define the image through silhouette, and shape recognition. The space will help you correct angles and proportions when you go off—or— if you […]
Let Yourself Push Your Sketch Marks Now and Then
OK, we can’t get the whites of the paper back when we are working in pen and ink (unless we resort to the X-acto blade, or ProWhite gouache), but it’s still a useful endeavor to keep pushing with the lines. I find that working with a dried out pen pushes me to be a little […]
Embrace the Wonkiness
Too many of my students fuss and fuss over a wonky line, or worse, stop a sketch altogether because a likeness is lost. But I think there is great fun in diving in with a bold pen and feeling about for the features, one wonky line after the other. Finishing something leads to something else […]
Giving Yourself Feedback
Recently on the blog I wrote about how it’s important to ask yourself questions in your journal. It’s also important to give yourself feedback in your journal. I find it useful when I’m making portrait studies to write short notes to myself about the angles that need correction, proportions, colors used and so on. I […]
In Context—Books I’ve Been Reading
I’ve been downsizing my library, so I have been spending my free-time in the past year rereading books before I give them away. Here’s a character’s take on crime-novel reading. I have my own theories on the popularity of mysteries and crime fiction. And of course on my own readership of those genres. But hey, […]
In Context—Another Peek at Pandemic Life
Pandemic life can’t help but pop up in your journal if you’re working from home. I’ve been sorting my images, all in little folders ready for blog posts. I have had some, like this one from 2020 set to go—but I don’t remember what the topic was to be. Last week (2021) I cooked a […]
In Context—It’s All Grist for the Mind Mill
Ever since childhood I’ve been the type of journal keeper who has visual elements in amongst written elements. It doesn’t matter if it’s something that I hear on the street, or in this case on the TV. It doesn’t matter if it is something that I’m reading. Everything is fair game, and I get down […]
In Context—Just for Fun
Somedays my eyes do better than others. The double vision isn’t as bad and I even sketch without my glasses, getting something that comes close to what I saw. Even in 2019 I was learning to live with the absence of dependable and repeatable results. Then it would drive me nuts and I would mutter […]
Feeling Around A Face
I did this sketch of Bill Bailey in a hand bound journal I’d made with 90 lb. watercolor paper (8 inches square). I was watching one of the several British comedy shows he turns up on—which is the best way for a US-based viewer to catch him. (It was probably an episode of QI which […]
Bookbinding and Journaling, I Can Be Contrary In My Choices
I started the new year with one of the journals I bound in the fall of 2017. (I made 50 plus journals in a month while in a cast [foot and ankle] due to a fall down some stairs. Another contrary choice I see in hindsight—but the orthopedic surgeon had cleared me for activity.) It […]