Process

Jensen Beach Map

| Gina Lento

I was playing around in my sketchbook trying to work on some illustration “to do” lists and one of the items on my list is to do more maps. I usually go very project detailed and would post them on They Draw and Travel but sometimes just freeing up my creativity to play in my sketchbook and allow myself to make mistakes takes the pressure off to explore, play and create art for the fun of it.

A playful hand drawn map of Jensen Beach, FL with blue, light orange and teal green color. Done in a square Plumchester Sketchbook. Image has not been digitally retouched to remove imperfections.
Map of Jensen Beach, Florida

I started the map the beginning of the week and made all these really cool icons. However, I decided to do the map while in the car when John and I were out and about. We were listening to the Yellowstone Podcast. I wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing until I realized that the paint marker I used was awful for this project. I didn’t like how the first map looked and the acrylic was shiny, not matte and you couldn’t write or draw over the acrylic. Well that was big a fail.

When I came back to the house, I had to go back to the drawing board, pun intended, and redo how I thought my map should look, minus the shiny marker. (The shiny marker came from an Artsnacks box.) I have Posca paint pens and Molotows which are much better for what I wanted to do. I drew the whole map again in pencil, playing with my placement of few things and I like this one much better.

I have included the image along with a version that shows what supplies I used. My Lamy Safaris are filled with Carbon Ink so they were perfect for this project. One Lamy is an extra fine point and the other is a medium point and I am really happy with how the map came out. There’s a few things that I would correct digitally but overall I really enjoyed doing this map.

Sketchbook spread of the art supplies used to create the hand drawn map of Jensen Beach. Posca pens, Lamy safaris and Molotow pens were used,
The full page sketchbook spread with supplies

Inktober Day 30

| Gina Lento

Two days to go! I can’t believe October ends tomorrow! So sad because this is the best month of the year. The sad thing about October ending is we jump from Autumn right into the Christmas season without being able to enjoy Thanksgiving as an Autumn holiday. I mean, it’s nice to hear the Christmas music but I am not usually ready for holiday music until the day after Thanksgiving. What’s even more annoying is that the Christmas season ends in January, on the Feast of the Epiphany, but the music gets cut off Midnight on Christmas. Really? Like, at least play it until New Year’s Eve.

Sigh. Putting the soapbox away.

Today’s prompt is “gear” and I opted to sketch my backpack with some of my art supplies. I haven’t used this backpack in a while and I had just pulled it out to tidy up my art supplies closet. This is not a realistic sketch because I lug around more than this when I go out to sketch. Way too much stuff……

I usually carry around several different sizes and types of sketch books. I usually carry one with watercolor paper and a square one, that’s Instagram friendly. Various pens including my trusty old Lamy Safari and usually a Uniball Vision. I carry mechanical pencils because they don’t need to be sharpened. I just realized I drew regular brushes when my go to brushes when I am sketching on location are usually water brushes, which are brushes that have water in the barrel and you squeeze them for water and you rinse the brush by squeezing and wiping on a paper towel. I also drew a palette but the one I use the most is the size of a credit card and almost as thin! I bought it empty and I put my own colors in it.

Inktober Day 30 "Gear" Pen and Ink drawing of a backpack and art supplies which include a palette, brushes, pen, pencil and a sketchbook.
Inktober Day 30 “Gear”

Mixed media Tempest

| Gina Lento

As mentioned in my last post, I have a homemade sketchbook in which I have been creating mixed media/collage spreads, and I have been trying to finish it for a while. Sometimes, I spend so much time on things I think matters, that I forget about the things I used to enjoy doing. It took me a while to get the hang of the whole collage thing, too. It’s smart to keep up the practice, at least weekly.

I have a large amount of 4×6 collage art because of my cat project that I started several years ago. I’d like to keep doing the postcards because I get a ton of ideas which led to creating larger works from those 4×6 pieces. Whenever you feel like you are getting stale, play in a sketchbook or do some postcard sized work. It really helps.

For instance, this page from my sketchbook has elements in it that surprise me. I look at the page and realized that I created some patterns that I can use in design work. This page was all intuitive work, placing things and not thinking about it, or at least, not planning. Just going with the flow. Sometimes when you go with the moment and don’t get hung up about perfection, creativity just happens. This isn’t meant to be a masterpiece, just sketchbook play to see how far I can go with it. Looking at this, I can almost hear Richard Dreyfus and Robert Shaw singing “Spanish Ladies” or something from John Williams and “Jaws” just a little ominously playing in the background.

(Like right now, I can’t get that Tango music out of my head, you know, the one from “True Lies?” …with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis…. Por Una Cabeza. I now have it as an ear worm because “Discovery of Witches” closed Season 3 with Por Una Cabeza. I am sure that will turn up in something I have created LOL….Harry, Helen, let’s not get distracted…….)

I guess there are worse things that could be an ear worm. Por Una Cabeza is pretty bad ass.

pale aqua background with collaged ephemera enhanced with gel and paint pens. A few sharks, fish and a clipping from an old painting magazine.
Mixed Media – Tempest Sketchbook page

Mixed Media/Collage

| Gina Lento

Well, it turns out that the Inchie challenge was only 11 days, not 12. I was surprised when I pulled up emails Saturday morning and there was no prompt. Well that was a bummer because the Inchie challenge was fun. I’ll probably keep 2×2 squares with me to work on when I am out of the house. They would make cool thumbnail squares and I have plenty of art that I haven’t posted yet.

That being said…

Several years ago, before Teesha Moore had her stroke, I was a member of Teesha’s Artstronauts Club. I really miss that club. It was chock full of mixed media collage (MM/Collage) goodness. I started a few mixed media collage sketchbooks that I still have to finish. Some morphed into my Zombie doll Sketchbooks and my creepy portrait sketchbooks that I did finish. I never really thought of myself as a collage artist until I took a few of Carla Sonheim’s classes and things started to click. I have been playing with patterns, lettering and other techniques that gave me the skills I need to finish some of these unfinished sketchbooks.

Most of my MM/ collage sketchbooks are home made and hand stitched so that they would could be a specific shape or size and they have a theme. Most have a limited amount of pages which makes the project easy to finish.

This sketchbook is a mixture of cut collage from pretty much anything; some collage is home made from paint drips and such. I used Teesha Moore’s “Amazing 16 Page Journal” format. It’s a full sheet of 30 x 22 hot or cold press Fabriano watercolor paper that’s cut into 3 10×22 pieces and are folded into pages and stitched to create the 16 page sketchbook. On my mixed media pages I use paint markers and gel pens, fortune cookie fortunes, cut out lettering and quotes, basically a miss mosh of pieces assembled to make a whole page.

This has been in my “to do” pile a long time and I and finally posting some of these pages. The page size is 8×10 and the excess wasn’t trimmed, it is a flap that became a design of it’s own on one side and on the other it was part of a full page spread. I had a ton of chihuahuas from a 365 desk calendar that I save and used in various art projects. Lots of paint marker embellishments.

8x10 Mixed media collage sketchbook page using various bits and scraps of collage. Chihuahuas, old ticket stubs, embellishments with paint markers. The Chihuahua heads were added to "bodies."
Pages 2/3 Mixed media collage
8x10 Mixed media collage sketchbook page with lavender background using various bits and scraps of collage. Chihuahuas, embellishments with paint markers.
Page/Flap 1 Mixed Media Collage

Inchies Day 9

| Gina Lento

It is Day 9 of the Inchie Challenge and today’s prompt is “innovative.” The term innovative can be interpreted many different ways with illustration. It could be a light bulb over someone’s head, or an exclamation point to show a new idea. I decided to use innovative thinking to create a pattern out of something I usually use as a decorative border, a dash and a circle.

I started on the a 2×2 square with the dashes and circles, creating a pattern which included negative space. This is the square on the top left of the photo. I could have stopped there, but then I did a second one , top right.

Looking at the two, I figured, “OK, I did two. Why not a quad?” Before I knew it, squares 3 and 4 were finished. Then I took my photo. As I looked at the four together, I thought, “Why don’t I just color in the circles?” Filling them in gave the composition a whole new look.

I like how they can hold their own composition alone, and together as a set. This is an idea that is encouraged by Amy Maricle with her Inchies exercises. One Inchie can lead to an entire collection that can standalone as one square or be part of a large collection of squares. Last year I did 8 squares together as a set. I completely forgot about that until the “innovative” prompt. I have three more days of the Inchie Challenge to try a larger grouping.

If you are feeling a little stale in your creative practice, try creating art on separate panels, or breaking up a page in a sketchbook with squares divided like a window and then fill in each one with piece of a subject to look like you are seeing the scene from inside instead of outside. Or you could try adding different parts of the place where you are in each box so that each box has a piece of a location or subject and then the entire page is a compilation of the subject. The beauty of the Inchie Challenge/practice is the way it can clear your mind to inspire new approaches for creating art.

Four 2x2 squares with pen and ink dash and circle patterns. The 4 squares were created to have individual compositions separately but they are also combined to be part of a larger composition.
Inchie Day 9 Dashes and Circles
Four 2x2 squares with pen and ink dash and circle patterns. The 4 squares were created to have individual compositions separately but they are also combined to be part of a larger composition. The circles were filled in with this version
Inchies Day 9 with dashes and filled in circles

Uh oh Frog

| Gina Lento

On my Zoom call today with Mike Lowery, we had to decide on what prompt to draw. Someone suggested a frog. We have frogs all over the place, here. When my husband and I go for our morning walk, we have to dodge these tiny little frogs. You can barely see them. One morning there were hundreds of them and my husband remarked about the quantity. I said it was just logical, there needed to be so many babies because of how many get eaten or suffer some other ill fate.

So of course, my idea of “frog” is “egret chow.” The egrets (herons and ibis) stroll around the neighborhood, scarfing up frogs and lizards, and whatever else they find edible.

My sketch of frog was more of an egret and a frog hiding from the egret.

Pens and ink sketch of frog hiding from an egret in a marsh.
Egret and frog sketch

I pulled the sketch into Procreate and then tweaked it:

Egret and frog in a marsh. digital black and white
Digital version of Frog and Egret

The frog needs to find a better hiding spot.

Character map

| Gina Lento

These are sketches of a character created by Zoe Tucker for the MATS Character Bootcamp. I sketched these out and then decided which pose I wanted to develop further. The story is about Florencia, a time explorer, who is sent to look for Dodos back in time.

Sketches done of a little girl in 5 different poses. The little girl is in a hat in the middle pose with a backpack and a field coat...with hiking shoes. Another image is of the little girl dressed in the field coast looking off in the distance with binoculars. Another sketch has the little girl holding a magnifying glass, studying a rabbit. Another has her hiking. The final sketch is the little girl sitting and reading research books.

Parsley

| Gina Lento

Here’s another sketch of an item I usually don’t consider high on my list of subject matter to draw or paint. Sketched with an opaque watercolor and ink on toned Stonehenge paper in my homemade sketchbook. The sketch hasn’t been retouched digitally…..yet.

Parsley.

Parsley is one of the herbs that I have growing in pots on my lanai. We tried planting it in a garden in the yard, but it seems that we have super slugs down here that can obliterate a plant over night. HA! They can’t get in the screen house though, and now that the screech owls are back for another nesting season, the slugs are high on the gourmet snack list. Poetic justice. Good birdies!

How do I know that the screech owls are back? The snitches. The feathered blue tattle tales with the big mouths. Aka Blue Jays. Nothing is safe from the preying eyes of these feathered informants. One of the screech owls was sleeping in one of our palms and the Blue Vigilantes raised quite a ruckus which of course alerted the Red Squad, aka Cardinals, along with a few mockingbirds. They let up a bit when I went out there to walk the perimeter of the yard, found the poor abused owl and when I went back in the house, they flew away and let him sleep. I could hear his mate trilling gently from another tree. I guess the fact that I didn’t react sent the birds off to harass the other raptors in the neighborhood (and we have plenty.)

A little while later, another hit squad showed up, the Palm Warblers, aka ELVES WITH ATTITUDE. I could hear them while I was cooking, And they were doing everything BUT warbling. They were just about taunting him, hopping from branch to branch almost like they were playing “chicken”. Hootie had moved and was hiding his face in a different palm, trying to catch some Zzzz’s. If he had a pillow it would have been pulled over his head. I thought the Tiny Hit Squad had some nerve because they would have been an entree for the owls. I promised Hootie that we would build him an owl box this week to replace their palm that fell down from rot.

I noticed that the lizard population seems to be slightly dented. I haven’t seen as many hanging out on the screens but now that the owls are back, I realized the herd is being culled. It’s nice to hear the owls at night. They trill, then look at you like, “I didn’t do it and if I did I wouldn’t admit it.” They hang out in our yard and poach whatever moves. They like the frogs, too. Last year a slug did get in the screen house on one evening, and I tossed it in the air towards the nest. It got snapped outta the air before it hit the ground! That’ll learn the slugs! I was impressed.

This whole post about owls from a sprig of parsley…..

AEDM Day 23 – Pug Portrait Round 2

| Gina Lento

A little over a week ago I posted the pug sketch. Here is another sketch done with watercolor. I am basically auditioning various media to see which one works the best. I have an acrylic one started, on my desk. So far the watercolor version is winning but we’ll see tomorrow if I feel the same way about it.