Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Limbering Up for the Sketchcrawl Tomorrow

Here are two pieces I did today (I can't call them drawings since one's a painting! lol), both were done in my garden.

The rose comes with a survival story. This is an old, well-established rose and that's the only reason it survived the neglect it suffered for several years before I bought the house.

It was being strangled byCampanula (Bellflower) on one side and Bearded Iris on the other. I've been spoiling it for a few months and it's come back to strength and glory. I thought it deserved a victory lap. 

"Fourth of July Rose," watercolor & gouache in a Moleskin sketchbook
This page is a quick series of sketches, really just to limber up my hand. Although they're in reverse order here, the pen & ink was done first as a warm-up.


Plant studies, pen & ink

Saturday, August 13, 2016

Centralia's Sketchcrawl is Thursday, August 18th from 6-8pm



If you’re a rank beginner at drawing this event might not be for you, so move along now…

You know how when you’re an artist you’re always trying to figure out what to draw?

You know how you’ve heard about this thing called URBAN SKETCHING and you think it’d be really cool to try?

You know how you’ve heard about something called a SKETCHCRAWL, where a bunch of artists hang out, draw outside together, then show off their stuff online, making other wannabe urban sketcher artists really really jealous?

The problem is that you don’t know where these SKETCHCRAWLS happen…and even IF YOU DID, you’d still be afraid to go to one because:
  1. you don’t want to look like a dork in public
  2. you’re afraid that some car will hit you while you’re drawing
  3. you don’t want other people to think your drawings SUC

That’s why you should come to Centralia’s Third Thursday sketchcrawl:
  • It has loads of historical buildings to draw
  • It’s a small town, so cars will stop for you when you’re hauling your art crap across the street. (They also won’t run you down when you’re deep in the artistic groove drawing.)
  • People are NICE! They’ll cluster around and admire your artwork…which you can then share confidently with all your online friends.
  • There’s a KICK ASS art gallery in town, that’s totally worth the visit.

But probably the best part is that you can make friends with other sketch artists, who might become FRIENDS FOR LIFE.

You’ve got tons of art supplies that you bought because people told you they’d be great for urban sketching. Since you’ve spent all that money already, why not use them?

Not to mention the fact that you really LIKE TO DRAW, but don’t have an excuse to do it most of the time.

That’s why coming to Centralia’s Third Thursday sketchcrawl on August 18th from 6 to 8pm would make your life SO much happier, and even help you make new friends.

And the other artists at the sketchcrawl WON’T JUDGE you or your artwork, because they know how it feels TO BE JUDGED.

PLUS… you can TELL all your online friends that you’re now an URBAN SKETCHER and you can post your artwork to all those urban sketcher ONLY websites.

There’s only space for 15 sketchers at this sketchcrawl, so sign up right now or you’ll miss out.

Email me at sara@saralightwaller.com and I’ll get you on the list right away.

See you there!

Sara Light-Waller
Sketchcrawl Organizer

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Sketch of the Day


Recently, I went to an estate sale and picked up several wonderful art books including — “The Pencil” by Paul Calle. Every now and again I need to remind myself what a really good pencil artist looks like, and Paul Calle is one. The truth is that pencil artists and pen and ink artists have a lot in common, both use strokes/marks of different shapes and weights to create the illusion of texture and tone. I tend to forget this and use pencil as a tone medium only, that is to say, I use it as solid grey “color” in a range of values.


I’m working on book character designs at the moment and enjoyed getting some "character" into this fellow’s face using line marks instead of graded tones. You definitely get the sense of age here, as well as grit, which is just what I was looking for. There'll be more sketches of this old guy to come, he's a featured player in the story.

But pencil line marks are definitely something to investigate further, I like the way this drawing turned out. Although it felt like I was using a very limited set of marks, there is some variety here.

P.S. I'm trying to become a bit more blog savvy, hence the artsy-header. Apparently, people like colorful titles. So yes, I'm upping my "trendy" game. We'll see what comes of that!