Opaque watercolor and sharpie pen. Portland Head Lighthouse

Sketchbook Skool has started! This semester is called “Seeing”. First assignment for this week was to draw toast. Ugh. I can’t say that was really enjoyable, but I get it. The goal is to get you to see things as shapes that aren’t associated with labels. Just draw the nooks and cranny’s. I was lucky enough to have some homemade bread that was stale enough to qualify as toast. I drew it for as long as I could.

Second part of this lesson was “Fast and Slow”. I have to admit this was kind of right up my alley–but a different take on how to start a piece. The instruction was to use one or two colors of paint to “draw” simple lines indicating the subject, and quickly. No more than 60 seconds to start. After you get that down, you draw in the details with a pen and really look carefully at all the complexity and proportions–take your time, draw for about an hour.

The most difficult thing for me in this was actually choosing the subject. I didn’t have anything from life that I was interested in drawing, so I just decided to work from a photo I had taken last May. I love this composition with the lighthouse and the Big dog. Buildings are not something I would normally choose to draw, so that was an added challenge. Proportions aren’t perfect, but no one really knows that but me. Fun assignment, and I definitely learned from it. And, I am inspired to maybe to do a Big Dog sketch book–he is such a fun subject.

Bread: micron pen