home made sketchbook

Getting out to sketch

| Gina Lento

It was time to get out out to do some sketching. We took Mack for a ride to sit on the causeway. You can always find a nice breeze here. Even in the middle of summer, we still get a breeze.

As I am writing this, an osprey just snagged a fish out of the water. There were terns earlier. Mack is barking at some dogs and their people. How dare they walk so close to our vehicle! He’s sitting on John’s lap getting his belly scratched and protecting the Realm.

We pulled into a shady parking spot but the sun slowly dropped beneath the horizon. We should go on the North side and look for the meteor shower.

A photo of my twilight sketch complete with the on location photo…

Pen and ink with watercolor sketch of palm tree overlooking the Indian River West bank in Jensen Beach by Gina Lento
Jensen Beach Causeway
Pen and ink with watercolor sketch of palm tree overlooking the Indian River West bank in Jensen Beach by Gina Lento taken on the dashboard of our car after finishing the sketch
Sketch on location

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

Found

| Gina Lento

Hubby and I were out walking and came upon a tree that looked like it had washed out avocados hanging from it. Turns out, it was a mahogany tree. We were awed at the beauty of the tree and the rarity of its wood.

An older woman gave us cuttings from the tree and told us to root them. She told us how old her tree was. I secretly thanked the tree for the cuttings.

I found one of the pods on the ground and it popped open this afternoon, seeds spilling out.

I’ll try planting the seeds, as well.

Skates

| Gina Lento

Ellie dreams of being an Olympic figure skater. She practices every day and loves skating in the snow. The creek near her house freezes over in the winter and it is her favorite place to skate. She and her friends create a rink and a track on the frozen creek and they do pretend Olympic Winter Games all season long. Winter is fun where Ellie lives.

Today’s carved stamp is an abstract design and I carved it without a sketch. I drew in pencil right on the stamp.

Puffin

| Gina Lento

This prompt was easy because I made a pamphlet book for my grandkids a few years ago that was about Arctic animals, puffins being one of them. I have not shown this book outside the family so this is the first time that I can remember actually posting one of the illustrations on my blog and social media. The book has a wintery Arctic feel to it and I really enjoyed doing this book. I should probably pull the entire book into Procreate and update it submit it to publishers. I did it to create awareness of the animals that would be negatively impacted by a warming planet.

Today’s stamp is also included below. It’s a stylized poinsettia. New blades came from Amazon which made a significant improvement in my cutting skills, LOL.

Long beaked Cardinal

| Gina Lento

Another Imaginary Creature pulled out from the page. I drew the beak long and almost erased it, but left it because it isn’t supposed to be representational anyway.

There’s a lot of angles to this guy. He uses them to hide in oak and elm trees.

I also included what the page looked like before I painted him so you can see where I got the idea for him.

Georgie is about to have a bad day

| Gina Lento

I have a few “prepped” homemade sketchbooks with patterned backgrounds that I use for characters. Sort of like a staged background. Today I used the background to randomly “find” a character.

This guy almost jumped off the page. But then he looks very terrier-ish so that would be normal for a terrier.

Georgie is a happy guy. Everyone loves him except……

The Cat Bully….

Bunnies are back

| Gina Lento

I am working on my spring sketchbook again after a little hiatus. Yeah I know, it’s high summer. As I am typing this, a shelf cloud crawls across the sky covering us with a thunderstorm blanket. The palms look like tall thin ladies with their hair blowing behind them. Two sandhill cranes walked by my window with two fuzzy babies. I ran out to take their photo before they are gone. They don’t seem to mind the rain.

Back to the bunnies….These bunnies came from random blobs in my morning pages. I don’t always see bunnies in the blobs but I have a bunch that I can use to finish the sketchbook…though a stray bird or other animal may pop in.

Snowball spotted a juicy patch of dandelions from her favorite tanning rock, but Sandy the fox has her burrow over there. Decisions decisions.

The last is actually the first…

| Gina Lento

Today is my final 50 Friendly Faces post. I started this challenge the second day and got caught up doing the other days that I didn’t fo backwards to do Day 1 until last week.

50 Friendly Days Day 1 – “Famous face”

Quite frankly, this prompt held me up. What face should I choose? It was the choice that delayed the sketch so long but in the end, I chose an actor who was a Hollywood Legend.

I remember watching his movies on TV with my mom. He was a pretty big deal. My Uncle Joe always resembled him, and still does. Maybe a distant relative.

This legend had some issues in his personal life, which is sad. Hollywood wasn’t gold behind the scenes, especially then. It was dirty and tarnished but the movies they made were stuff of legends, including this fellow, who was a favorite of mine, for all his flaws. I liked him because he made me laugh with his dry wit.

I’ll let you guess. We’ll see how well I did….

Reference Photo used was from an issue of Motion Picture magazine.

This is sketch is in a personal sketchbook for personal use.