Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Sketchcrawling

Jumping from one site to another, I landed on Sketchcrawling, one of the more interesting projects I've founded lately. As they explain it far way better than I would, I'm just quoting them:

SketchaWhat?
Three or four years ago a good friend of mine had a fun bachelor party consisting of visiting ten bars and pubs along the N-Juda Muni tram line: a “PubCrawl”. And crawling we did, in fact we didn’t make it past the seventh pub. Quite the night, but that is where I got the idea for the name SketchCrawl when a few months later I decided to do a whole day of intense drawing around the city.
The basic idea: to record nonstop everything I could around me with my pencil and watercolors. A drawn journal filled with details ranging from the all the coffee I drank to the different buses I took. After a whole day of drawing and walking around the city the name seemed quite fitting: "SketchCrawl" - a drawing marathon. The crawl was more tiring than I imagined but also more fun and exciting than I had thought. Giving yourself this kind of mandate for a full day changes the way you look around you. It makes you stop and see things just a tad longer, just a bit deeper … needless to say I loved it.
I soon figured out it was much more interesting to do the marathon with a group of artists instead of all by myself! And so SketchCrawl turned communal. After a whole day of drawing it proved to be amazingly interesting and inspiring to share and compare other people's drawings and thoughts. Different takes on our surroundings, different details, different sensibilities.
The next step was making the SketchCrawl a World Wide event: having people from different corners of the world join in a day of sketching and journaling and then, thanks to the Internet, having everyone share the results on an online forum.
So here it is, we have a website now, a few Crawls behind me, some by myself some with friends and artists from around the world … and hopefully plenty SketchCrawls ahead of us.

They have also a forum, where people from all over the world keep in contact for the next big sketchcrawl. You can find me there too. Enjoy this project!

Friday, April 11, 2008

Missing Paris

It's been a while since the last time I posted, but I've been pretty busy at job. And I'm preparing a trip to Turkey for next week. It may be the first trip when I do some sketching, I don't know. Thinkin' on it. Anyway, here's what I've been doing the last three days. I took it easy :)

Letraset promarkers (warm gray 1,2,3,5)and Faber-castell's PITT pens in Clairefontaine Watercolor paper, 300gr.

Let me know what do you think, if you want. My favorite one is the top-right one. It was the last I did, and it seems I gained some patience on the way.

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Australian quick trip

Kangaroos, koalas, a surfer boy with a dog... Have I traveled to Australia? Of course not, I'm not that lucky. But I read a travel magazine, and decided it would be a cool practice.


Faber-Castell PITT pens in my Moleskine

I'm trying to have a stable style, but it seems impossible to me right now. I don't feel well drawing in a random way always, I'd like to have some coherence when sketching or painting. But I don't know how to achieve it, really. I suppose it's something related with practice too ;)

EDM #10 Draw your hand ors hands (or someone elses if you like)

Well, I forgot to scan and post #9, I'll do it tomorrow. But here is #10, my hand. And a fancy pencil sharpener, as I thought that just my hand would be a dull drawing...



This was done in Faber-Castell watercolor pencils in Montval Torchon watercolor paper, 270gr. I like its touch but it doesn't work with pencils, as is too soft and you can easily scratch it.