This is the first time I post to my blog from the phone, hope it comes out alright. This is a pic of a tree I sketched while on a staff meeting at work. No, it wasn’t that I was (that) distracted… My boss was speaking on his cell phone and this was a tree I could see through the conference room windows.
dibujo
Garabateando@La Catedral de San Juan
Yesterday we met at the Cathedral in Old San Juan. Sketchcrawl 33 was also held yesterday, so we participated in it as well. We also sketched some of the neighboring buildings.
I was using a few new tube watercolors I had filled half pans with and put in my travel tin. I am looking to make brighter and more colorful sketches, so I changed my palette a bit. Let’s see how it goes.
Here are some of my sketches:
Garabateando@PR Coffee Expo 2011
Today we sketched at the Puerto Rico Coffee Expo, an event that is commemorating the 275th anniversary of the coffee industry in Puerto Rico. It is being held at the PR Convention Center. Tomorrow the organizers will be breaking the Guinness World Record for the biggest cup of coffee, which they were already brewing on several makers. They will be serving 50 thousand cups of coffee! It is a humongous cup, see the link.
A friend of mine is one of the organizers, so he welcomed us to attend. I decided to give it a try to sketch with coffee, which I felt mandatory for the occasion. Until late last night I hadn’t ever tried to do it, but hey, it’s all about enjoying the moment and having fun, so I did.
I knew I was going to get plenty of coffee there, but I wasn’t going to get an over-done, ink-like one, so I prepared one at home. I put it in the microwave to evaporate some of the water so it would yield me the darker tones. There at the expo I used some of my drinking coffee for the medium tones and clear water (with whatever coffee was still on the brush) for the lighter tones and let the paper do the highlights. So I had at least 4 gradations which was good enough.
I sketched on Canson 140-lb watercolor paper, some at a 5″x7″ size and some at the Artist Trading Cards size, 2.5″x 3.5″. I had never tried that size before, so it was all about experimentation today. I did enjoy a lot the process, so I will be exploring the possibilities of the “medium”. Watching people freak out when I licked the brush was priceless. I did use a new brush, so no watercolor residues were ingested…
Here are some of my sketches today:
Sketching non-architectural subjects
I always tend to sketch architectural subjects, buildings, sculptures or spaces; of course, that’s what I’ve practiced for years. One of the coolest things about the blogging communities and forums is that you get to see what other people who share your interests are doing. I see a lot of incredible sketches by great artists whose subjects are objects or people from their daily life. Rather than being ordinary or mundane, their subjects are very interesting, dynamic and vibrant. So, I’ve started a new sketchbook devoted to non-architectural sketches, things from my everyday life which I will record as if it was a journal. But it is still a sketchbook… for the time I’ll stick to sketching rather than writing there.
Today was my first day and I am surprised at how much I sketched. Instead of going out with the purpose of sketching, I took out the sketchbook whenever I felt to, but with absolutely no pressure to even do a single drawing. I took a black fine Sharpie, a grey ultra-fine Sharpie, and the Pentel Manga set, fine brush-like markers. I sketched while at lunch and later at a poker tournament that I played at a local billiards room. Probably I’ll be sketching everyday now… no pressure, no watercolors, just ink on cheap paper. Here are some I did today:
Garabateando @Celestino Art Gallery
Yesterday our sketching group, Garabateando.com, met at Galería Paseos, a shopping center in San Juan. We had been invited by the owner of Celestino Art Gallery, Junior Ortiz, to meet them while some of the exposing artists had a painting session right there in the mall. Junior is also known in the local air waves as Junior Celestino, a radio show host I have been listening for years. What I didn’t know is that he was an artist as well as an entrepreneur. His gallery and works are very nice, so I’ll be visiting often.
I had gone there probably a dozen times before and yesterday I saw things I never had noticed, so that says so much about our stress and fast pace. My dear friend from college Karen and her daughter happened to be shopping and stopped by. She went to the store to get some paint supplies for her 4-year old to do some sketching. We also welcome our newest sketcher Carol and a by-passer who stopped and sat with us to sketch (I didn’t catch his name, my bad).
Here are my sketches for the day:
Sketchfully Yours 