October prize winners!

The winners of the October 2012 give away prize packages, chosen by random draw are:

(click on the winners names to see their sketchbook page)

Winners must email Sue at sue@suebleiweiss.com with their full name, flickr name and mailing address by 11/9/12 in order to claim their prize.

Prize package giveaway from Gelli Arts:

The winner is:

ANDY LEAN!

One lucky winner will receive an 8"x10" Gelli Art plate!

Prize Package from Meinke Toy:

The Winner is:

ERICA-LOWE!

 a $25 gift certificate to Meinke Toy!

Winners must email Sue at sue@suebleiweiss.com with their full name, flickr name and mailing address by 11/9/12 in order to claim their prize.  Prizes not claimed by 11/9/12 are forfeited.

Thank you to everyone who posted photos in the flickr group and congratulations to all the winners!  

Cabinet of Computer Curiosities

This is Kristin, with my first post here. I've been enjoying The Sketchbook Challenge from the sidelines, and I'm pleased to have been invited to join in here on the blog. We have a Cabinet of Curiosities at home. Ours is just filled with old computer parts an accessories. 

I decided to draw it last week. Starting with a page already decorated with paper flowers (thank you Melanie Testa for encouraging me to just put stuff on a page and decide what to do with it later), I went straight in with a fine pen to draw the cabinet. My intention with the pen was to go a bit gestural and loose, but there's not really much gesture in a cabinet, is there? I was getting bogged down and didn't like the drawing. So, I set it aside for a week or so. It's perfectly OK to do that if you're not happy with a project's direction.

Today, inspired by the use here of grids and boxes as containers for one's curiosities, and knowing that zooming in almost always makes things more intriguing, I added another layer to my drawing. I drew details of the cabinet's contents right on top of the original drawing, using pencil and several pens -- to include a nice bold Sharpie. 

The cabinet drawing now provides some context, and an interesting layer of line texture and scale. The zoomed in drawings, while simple, are a little unexpected and, in my opinion, perk up my pretty pedestrian drawing of the cabinet.

Opportunities and Workshops

Workshops & Online Classes with your favorite Sketchbook Challenge artists.

We keep our commercial presence to one monthly post so that we can share other opportunities to take workshops, purchase art or enjoy other offerings from all of us. Check out our workshops and  books. Thank you for being a part of the Sketchbook Challenge! It's an honor to share this journey with you.

Carol Sloan

Nov. 17 & 18, 2012 10-4pm

Gorilla Book Making
Colorado Springs, CO @ Blue Twig Studio
More info here

April 24, 2013

"Birds of a Feather"

Art & Soul Retreat  Virginia Beach, Virginia

August 21-27, 2013

Build a Book of Italian Memories 
Sulmona, Italy @ Abruzzo Creative School of Art
 More info here

Lyric Kinard

Nov 13 - 15, 2012 Quilter's Anonymous in Seattle

The Elements of Art and Wearable Art lectures

5 Ways to Appliqué class. More info here.

Start your planning for next spring!

March 10-15, 2013 Quilting Adventures a five day retreat in Texas Hill Country : Surface Design Sampler Platter

Five fabulous days playing with fabric, paint, foil, photo transfer, beading, stamping, screen printing - and a lot of design! More info here.

Jamie Fingal

November 1, 2012 Open Studios in Houston at the International Quilt Festival!

Jamie will be demonstrating free-motion quilting, Rebel-style, on Thursday, 11/1/12, from noon until 2:00 pm. Look for her on the show floor in the Open Studios area. She will be doing a second Open Studios demonstration of art quilt construction using Mistyfuse on Friday, 11/2/12, from 2:00-4:00 pm.

More info here.

Leslie Tucker Jenison

Open Studios at the International Quilt Festival - Gel Plate Monoprinting. Stop by and see me on Thursday, November 1st, from noon through 2:00 pm. I'll be back to demonstrate free-motion quilting on Friday, November 2nd from 2-4 pm.

Dinner At Eight Artists are taking "Rituals", the newest juried exhibition of art quilts, to the International Quilt Festival in Houston, courtesy of Havel's Scissors.  Be sure to stop by and check out the wonderful array of quilts!  Check your show schedule for location. More info here.

Jane Davies

Unlocking the Secrets of Color  
This online workshop is six weeks, beginning January 9, 2013.
More info here

Exploring the Self-Portrait
This online workshop is six weeks, beginning January 9, 2013

January 10 - 12, 2013 Mono Print Fabric-Paper, Tucson, AZ  
More info here

Kari McKnight Holbrook
 

Artistic Artifacts in Alexandria VA
Information here

Vintage Vessels                                                                                                       Friday, January 25, 2013  9:00 am – 4:00 pm

Relic Rings
Friday, January 25, 2013   6:00 – 9:00 pm

No Sew Journal On The Go! 
Saturday, January 26, 2013    9:00 am – 4:00 pm

Delectable Doodles & Funky Fonts
Saturday, January 26, 2013    6:00 – 9:00 pm

Jane LaFazio

Fallbrook, California (just north of San Diego) Friday December 7th & Saturday December 8th, 2012, two day workshop. Nostalgia art quilt: free spirited free motion with Jane LaFazio Cost: $255.00. Students will learn free motion stitching your original design, and combining paper with cloth to create your own totally unique art quilt. Bring a sewing machine. More info here. 

Santa Fe, New Mexico. Mixed media retreat April 21-28, 2013. Details here. 

Lake Como, Italy! October 7-13, 2013. More info here.

Deborah Boschert

Deborah Boschert is an instructor with STITCHED, a collection of 20 online video workshops. Her workshop is titled Branches, Buds and Blossoms: A Botanical Fabric collage and includes segments on surface design, composition and embellishment. More info here.

Deborah Boschert's new DVD workshop from Quilting Arts was just released! "Contemporary Fabric Collage: Design, Stitch and Finish" includes segments on fabric selection, using sheer fabrics and hand embroidery. More info here.

Sign up for Deborah Boschert's e-newsletter for regular updates and free pdf downloads.

Kelli Nina Perkins

2012 STITCHED Online Video Workshops. Over 20 projects with full video tutorials. Work all year, take as many as you'd like for one fee. More info here                 

big bugs/little bugs

Sue B here...

Whenever I go into the bookstore I always head to the section where they sell the blank journals and sketchbooks to make sure there isn't one I just have to bring home with me.  The other day when I was in there I came across one of the story board moleskin journals that Jamie had mentioned in her blog post here and I bought myself one.  As soon as I got my new journal home I grabbed a pencil and sketched a few bugs for this months theme...

   I really like the format of this sketchbook because the little boxes down the sides of the pages makes it easy to do little thumbnail sketches but there's still plenty of room on the page for a larger sketch as long as your comfortable working across the center of the page.

Celebrating 10,000 photos!

Over here at Sketchbook Challenge headquarters we've all been buzzing with anticipation about when the 10,000 image would get posted on our flickr group and here it is:

We just couldn't let this milestone pass without celebrating it so we decided to put together a prize package to send to the person who posted the 10,000 photo.  So congratulations jprater28209 on being the 10,000 poster in the Sketchbook Challenge Flickr group because you've just won a truckload of loot from us!

Here's what you won:

From Pam Carriker: Poetic Portrait stamps from Stampington and a bottle of my Liquid Pencil Sketching Ink

From Jane LaFazio: From art journaling to art DVD

From Laura Cater-Woods:  a goodie bag of collage/embellishment stuff (may include rusty bits and keys, mystery fabric and who knows what!)

From Kari McNight-Holbrook: two of my large 8.5 x 11 stamps from my stamp line

From Sue Bleiweiss: a copy of The Sketchbook Challenge book and an 8 1/2”x 5” Strathmore visual journal

Terry Grant: a glass mug coaster with an image from one of my quilts on it.

Frances Holliday Alford: a  framed collaged postcard

From Deborah Boschert:  Contemporary Fabric Collage: Design, Stitch and Finish with Deborah Boschert DVD

 Explore fabric collage using a variety of materials, including sheers and other unexpected fabrics, as well as free-motion work and hand-stitched details.

From Jamie Fingal: Mistyfuse, a pair of Havel's  non-stick 6-1/2 scissors and some paper scraps, and shipping tags

From Lesley Riley: a pack of TAP

From Susan Brubaker Knapp: original artist trading card

From Desiree Habicht:  A panel and coordinating fabric from my Horsin Around fabric line and five of my top selling patterns.

From Jane Davies: copy of my new dvd Scribble Collage with Hand-Painted paper

From Leslie Tucker Jenison: hand-dyed fabric and a framed mail art card,

From Kristin LaFlamme: Fabric postcard

From Lyric Kinard: A copy of my DVD Bead it Like You Mean It

From Kelli Perkins: a stash of paper beads

From Traci Bunkers: 5 postcards of my journal pages

All of your prizes are shipping to you from each of the artists so your mailbox will be filled with goodies arriving for quite a while!

Our sincerest thanks to all of you for following and participating in the Sketchbook Challenge over the last 2 years.   We're still having fun after all these years and we're looking forward to sharing more inspiration, milestone celebrations and sketches through 2013!

by Jane LaFazio

Curiosities

Terry Grant here. My plan, for this month, was to draw some of the odd assortment of things that I keep in my old china cupboard/cabinet of curiosities. It has been a busy month. What can I say? I did manage to draw my little Navajo vase today and thought I'd show you a trick I like for trying out different techniques on a drawing.

I drew a little line drawing of the vase first. BTW, a Navajo wedding vase is a traditional shape that is made to be used in wedding ceremonies and has two spouts, one for the bride and one for the groom, to drink from. Mine is from the San Ildefonso pueblo where they make the highly polished black pottery.

Once I have my simple line drawing, I scan it and then print several copies. I print them on drawing paper, cut to the size my printer accepts. Then you can play with them without messing up your original.

For the first one I used some markers. I had purchased these in several shades of gray to do value studies for a class I took recently and thought it might be interesting to try using them to render a grayscale drawing. The markers went right over one of my copies.

I used my fine point pigma pen on the second copy. I wanted to try to achieve the effect of the highly reflective black glaze on the vase using a crosshatching technique.

Depending on what kind of ink or toner your printer uses you can experiment with wet media over the copies as well. As long as you keep your original line drawing pristine you can make as many copies and try all kinds of things with that little headstart of the original drawing.

Cabinet of Dia de los Muertos

Jane LaFazio here.

Dia de los Muertos.

                                                          Frances Holliday Alford

Skulls come one to a customer.  In Mexico, All Saints Day is celebrated with friends and family and is a national holiday.  It is a memory of their departed relatives and friends.  It is celebrated with food and festivity and all kinds of imagery.   As we approach November 1, it is fitting that we explore some of these images. Sugar skulls are used to decorate the graves along with marigolds. 

I have not been to Mexico during Dias de los Muertos, but as a Texan, I certainly have seen a lot in San Antonio and other areas.  I drew several basic skull shapes and then using Zen Tangle techniques, added drawings inside and around the skull.

Skull shaped rattles are made of Paper Mache in Mexico.  Brightly colored, they make fun collections.  I drew a group of nine of them. It might be a yearbook page for Muertos High School.

Daily Collage

From my daily collage series,  roses and marigolds, both strong symbols for

the day of the dead.  Marigolds are considered to be the iconic death image.  

                            

 

                                  Feliz día de los muertos.