MCBA Visual Journal Collective August Meeting ~ A Sketch Out!

Sketch from a recent outing to Gold Medal Park.
Faber-Castell PITT calligraphy pen and watercolor wash

Join us for a practice sketchout at Gold Medal Park in Minneapolis just a couple blocks from MCBA, on Monday, August 19th from 7-9 p.m.. We will meet at the corner of  South 2nd Street and 10th Ave., right at the base of the spiral path. There is street and ramp parking available in this area or you may arrive early and walk over from MCBA.

We will gather as a group at the park at 7p.m. rather than walk over from MCBA (although it is a quick walk) to allow as much time to sketch as possible.  I will give new sketchers some tips, I will pair up experienced sketchers with new sketchers as needed and we will draw whatever is in the park that evening.  
Gold Medal Park is right along the river, with great landscape and river views, as well as city sights, including walkers, bikers, picnics, dogs, birds, trees, etc.  This is the perfect opportunity to gain confidence and build your skills for sketching in public.  This is also a great warm up for the Fifth Annual Minnesota State Fair Sketch Out on August 27th.

Bring your journal, a favorite pen or pencil, travel palette and water brush, a folding chair if you like to sit when you sketch, a sun hat or sun glasses, some drinking water, and bug spray (in case the mosquitos are out).  Remember to travel light, you will be hauling whatever you bring along with you while you are drawing.  

We will stop drawing at about 8:30 and meet back at our starting place to share images created and discuss any "ah-ha" moments from the sketch out experience.

Roz Stendahl will be putting up signs at MCBA as a reminder of our location change for the evening and will walk over with late-comers, leaving MCBA at 7:10 p.m.

If it is raining around 7 p.m. we will meet at MCBA and have an indoor sketchout for practice instead.

Google map showing MCBA (marked with flag) and it's relationship to Gold Medal Park.
We will meet at the beginning of the spiral path, near the park sign at 7 p.m.

MONDAY, AUGUST 19, 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.—Gold Medal Park, Minneapolis—Practice Sketch Out 

The spot we are meeting for the August Journal Collective Sketch-Out via a Google Street View image.

Last Year's Sketch, This Year's Button

A pile of buttons for this year's sketch out at the fair.

For this year's Minnesota State Fair Sketch Out, Roz Stendahl asked me to design the button!  It was fun to look back through my four years of sketching at the fair and thinking about which images would stand out best on a button.  I have to say that I ended up making three designs and that this sheep from last year's book was the most striking and my third button attempt.

A section of my 2012 Minnesota State Fair Journal, showing the sheep
drawing used for this year's button design.
Strathmore 500 Mixed Media paper, Sharpie pen, Daniel Smith watercolor

In the image above you can see the page where the sheep sketch came from.  I scanned the sheep at a higher resolution and cropped out the green tea slushy before importing my image to PhotoShop.  In PhotoShop I further cropped the image to conform with the button template constraints and began adding text.

When I started with my first button idea, I realized that my PhotoShop skills had gotten a little rusty and I had a few false starts before regaining the hang of the program.  By the time I got to this guy I had pretty much figured it all out again and I was having fun creating the design for the button.

After cropping and resizing the image, I added the text that needed to go on the button, playing of course with fonts, sizes, location, and colors.  The button still seemed boring and bland (mostly white & black) so I decided that it needed a color pop and I used PhotoShop to color in the background area orange.  This created a great graphic feel and caused me to change the 5 in the design to a nice complementary blue.  Tada! We had a winner.

My collection of State Fair Sketch Out buttons. 

So, how do you get a button of your own?  Join us at the Minnesota State Fair on Tuesday, August 27th and sketch, paint, draw, or journal.  We will meet as a group at 4:30 p.m. near one of the Ag-Hort and Food buildings (more specific info posted later) to share our work and fair stories.  For some of the folks at the fair sketching, this will be the end of their day and for others it will be the beginning.  If you can't make the fair that day but do get there to sketch in the two weeks it's open, let me know and I can work on getting you a button.
You can also check out Roz's post over at the Artists' Journal Workshop about the upcoming sketch out and watch for more details here later in August including details about a pre-fair sketch-out in Gold Medal Park for practice on August 19th at 7 p.m..
Roz's post about the buttons.

State Fair Sketch-Out 2012

First page spread - I left this open and returned to it after the rest of the book was filled.
Gopher mascot statue and my collaged in gate ticket.

 This year's Minnesota State Fair sketch-out was a combined effort with sketchers from both the MCBA Visual Journal Collective and the MetroSketchers groups in attendance.  (The link will take you to a nice group shot and more information at Roz Stendahl's blog, complete with more links.)
I arrived at the fair at about 2:30 p.m. with a small (4x5.25) accordion journal made with Strathmore 500 series Mixed Media paper, a Faber-Castell PITT pen size F, and watercolors. Along with a desire to fill the book before I left for home knowing it would be my only trip to the fair this year.

Lunch as well as my first sketch of the day.  

 I had not had lunch when I got to the fair so my first task was to find food and get sketching as quickly as possible being we were meeting as a group at 4:30 and I had gotten to the fair much later than planned.  Both tasks were accomplished after I purchased, ate, and sketched a corn dog.  Of course not being used to the seemingly tiny pages in this book (about 5x8) I drew my corn dog way bigger than planned and it goes so far out of the page that honestly it becomes a bit abstracted and strange due to the limited view.

From my corn dog lunch I move on to the cow barn where cows are being lined up for pre and post judging in an outdoor pen between buildings.  This cow was standing tied to a fence and reasonably still so it made for a good first model.  The laying down cow was done after moving into the actual barn and was added into the space between the cow face and the cow backside (shown below) and is the same cow as the cow backside, which lay down mid sketch.

A couple of cows, the "i draw" button that Marty Harris
gave to all of us at our meeting later that afternoon
and a quickly done horse.

 After the cow laid down, and I drew it's new position and added some paint.  I tried to save the unfinished standing cow by looking at a new standing cow and adding on a neck and face.  I think I drew a tiny bit larger and ran out of room again on the page.  At this point I am discovering that the size I have created this accordion is a little awkwardly small.  It is surprisingly hard to hold and paint in while standing and my sketches keep leaving the page.  I now know that I will go back to the accordion journals that are about 6 inches square as they are still very small and portable but they are easier to manage than this tiny book.
I walked over to the horse barn from the cows, which is usually one of my favorite places to sketch at the fair. I have loved drawing horses since I was a little girl and look forward to seeing some in person every year.  This year there were very few horses in the barn and an overwhelming number of people looking at the handful of horses, a very bad combination for sketching.  I attempted a sketch of a horse tied in a hallway being trimmed thinking it would be standing there for several minutes and was shocked when the trimming involved only it's nose hair and was finished with the horse was being led away in under a minute.  I had no sketch time to waste being pushed into by strollers and fighting crowds so I left the horse barn and moved on to the pigs.

The pig barn is nearly empty of people which is a pleasant change from the horse barn and due in large part to people being afraid they will get sick from the animals.  I was able to draw a sleeping pig and stick around long enough to add some paint and I had only one person even pass down the aisle I was in.  While I was in the barn in a pen across the way they were judging pigs and the judge was making commentary on the status of each pig as it passed him.  I have to say the commentary was very interesting and included things such as "I love the way this animal is set on it's hocks"  "this hog carries its weight well".  

Next, I wandered down to the poultry barn knowing that it was nearing the time for our meeting and the poultry barn is en route to our meeting location.  I draw one warm-up chicken with just my pen and then find a pillar to lean against and paint the next chicken, choosing one with interesting black and white patterned feathers.  Drawing the chickens is always a bit of a challenge because they are never very still even with their limited space to move in the cage and in order to get a full sketch you have to wait for the bird to move back to the position you started from to complete the drawing.  

This book is the first book I have used with the 500 series Mixed Media paper, and I am starting to notice that it takes the watercolor a tiny bit longer to dry than I am used to, so I am walking from place to place with an open sketch before shutting my book.  Which isn't a problem but it is something to be aware of while working on a page spread.  I like that the paper texture is smooth and easy to draw on and that it is not buckling from wet work at all, which makes it nice to work on and I will not have to worry about the long accordion getting out of whack because of paper buckle issues.  The paper is also holding up well in this accordion structure, even with my continued folding back and forth around the book cover to complete drawings that go beyond the expected page spread the folds are not cracking and they do not seem to be weakening either which is good.

At this point our meeting time is close enough that I must leave the barns behind and walk across the fair grounds to the plaza between the food and agriculture buildings to see what the rest of my sketching friends have been up to all day.  I get to the meeting place a bit early and decide to try and sketch some fair goers while I wait for the group to gather.  While I sketch the man on the left I realize that someone is watching me, I ignore them and continue to sketch.  As I work they move in closer and at one point stand between me and the man I am sketching while exclaiming to the world at large that he knows who I am sketching and challenging other fair goers nearby to find the guy I am sketching too.  At this point I realize that this man is quite drunk and he continues to stand directly in front of me, so I have to lean and look around him to finish my drawing.  This drunken man is very excited that my sketch looks just like the man eating his lunch and decides that he would like to purchase my sketch to give to him as a gift.  As he announces this intention to me he tries to take my book with one hand and give me ten dollars with the other.  Needless to say I am not happy with this turn of events and I am glad of two things, one that I completed my sketch before things got weird and two that he backs off as I stand up and announce that I am flattered but my book is not for sale (and worth more than ten dollars empty) and that I have to go.  I have to say that this encounter is my strangest sketch in public moment ever.

I meet up with our group of sketchers at this point and we chat and compare scenes sketched, which is always the best part because everyone does such different stuff and it is always exciting to see all the variety in subject matter and style.  Ken Avidor has posted many images of sketches by group members taken that day as we chatted over on the Urban Sketchers Twin Cities blog.  If you follow the link you can check them out.  

We also had a special guest at our meeting from WCCO, Amy Rea.  She was in the process of writing an article on interesting things to see at the fair that might be unexpected and did a little blurb on our sketching group that day.

As our meeting is breaking up and we are discussing whether or not we are leaving or continuing to sketch I quickly sketched the couple seated at a table nearby to try and get one more sketch into my book as it has come to my attention that I have only three spreads to go and then my book is full.  I decide that I cannot leave until I fill my book so I say goodbye and wander back toward the barns.

The decision to continue to sketch seems like a mistake as I sit down and try to draw the green tea slushy I was drinking but I continue on to the sheep and add in a lamb resting against the back wall of it's pen and then finish my book with a brown goose.
Over all I had a reasonably good day sketching at the fair.  There are a few awkward sketches but they do not take away from the overall effect of the completed book and I feel that it is a great record of my day at the fair.  Looking back at my sketches, I do think that next year I may try to draw more people at the fair as I think that those were my favorite sketches from this year and it is not something I usually sketch while I am there.  Although next year is a long way off and there is no real way to tell what will catch my eye at next year's sketch-out.

The full accordion book as a continuous image.  My day at the fair in one long sheet.
5x82 inches, Strathmore 500 series Mixed Media paper, Grumbacher watercolor, Faber-Castell pitt pen size F

MN State Fair Sketch-out

sleeping pig - full spread about 7x14 inches

on Rives lightweight in cream,

sketched with Sharpie pen,

Grumbacher watercolor added

Last Saturday I was at the Minnesota State Fair with a group of about eleven people from the MCBA Visual Journal Collective for a sketch-out. We had a lovely day drawing amongst the thousands of visitors to the fair. We met as a group at one and four so we could chat about our adventures drawing at such a large public event as well as to share our work with one another.

My first sketch - trying to catch the

crowds and booths along a street

brown Pitt pen

I began my day drawing just using a brown (sepia) Pitt pen. I was trying to draw fast and catch a sense of the crowds, buildings, and booths that line the streets of the fair. I have to say that was challenging and I moved on to drawing the livestock in the barns instead.

The cow barn- brown Pitt pen

The animals are always enjoyable to draw at the fair and I got a handful of drawings in before the first meeting was scheduled. After we met as a group, I inadvertently switched pens. I had been using a sepia Pitt pen and I grabbed my black Sharpie pen instead - no big deal just something I noticed later when I looked at my sketches from the day.

After the break, I also switched it up and decided to try my hand at adding paint to my sketches on site. If I am going to add color I very often add it at home after the fact, but so many sketchers had beautifully painted pages from that morning I decided to try and paint too. That is the great thing about seeing someone else's work, it can push you to try something new.

Little sheep - Sharpie pen,

Grumbacher watercolor,

my favorite from the day.

The sheep was my first attempt at adding color on the spot. I was happy it worked out to paint as I sketched in the barn using my travel set and a Niji brush, so I continued to add color to the remainder of my pages. (The pig at the top of the post came after the sheep.)

After the pig and sheep, I took a sketching break and walked across the fair to see the fine art building and other sights. After walking back and arriving at our meeting place for the afternoon, I sat and sketched while talking to Marty Harris, a fellow sketcher at the fair. I was sketching a group of five boys that all had on green shirts but they got up before I finished the whole group - I got two and they were the last sketch I did that day.

I feel like I had a great day, I pushed myself to try something new and got to get out and spend the day drawing. What could be better?

Two boys - my last sketch of the day

done while talking with another sketcher and

waiting for the rest of the group.

Sharpie pen, Grumbacher watercolor

Minnesota State Fair Sketch-OUT (part three)

I know, I know, I have already talked about this sketching trip to the state fair, but I still have a couple of great sketches to show. One of a chicken, a rooster really, that started at the fair as a pen sketch like the rest of my work from that day and got altered later that evening at home by some paint.

I have had a hard time balancing sketching and painting in the field. I want to add color, I add color often when I sketch at home, but for some reason when I am out, especially somewhere busy, it just seems more streamlined to only use pen. I did not particularly like this sketch, before the paint. Chickens are never still, they bob and wiggle, and are just generally in motion and I found it hard to sketch them with any detail. When I was going through my sketches from the fair at home and talking with my husband about our respective days, I grabbed my watercolors and Niji brush and decided to experiment with remembered color. I have to say the chicken is now a bright patch in the middle of my fair drawings and I resolve to try and add more paint while sketching in the future.

The last sketches I have from that day are of our leader, Roz Stendahl. She has a bit of a personal challenge going on right now to infiltrate as many journals as possible in the next year. It is a contest as well, with the possibility of winning a beautiful journal made by Roz herself (follow the link in Roz's name for full contest details).

While we met at the end of the day Roz was talking to Tom, a new sketcher joining us, I was chatting with other fellow sketchers and I decided I had the perfect view to sketch Roz and join in on infiltration project fun. Of course when you sketch someone, they move sometimes and you cannot finish the sketch, as is the case with my first drawing. Roz turned to profile and never twisted back to the three-quarter view that I had started, oh well.

I did add a small profile sketch at the bottom, but I like the larger three-quarter view better.

That is my last fair sketch, I promise. But it was fun and I highly recommend getting out to sketch. You can check out other sketcher's work from our fair trip at Urban Sketchers Twin Cities and Roz Wound Up.

Minnesota State Fair Sketch-OUT (part two)

On Saturday I went sketching with the MCBA Visual Journaling Collective at the Minnesota State Fair. I have to say I had a great time. It was hot (a drawback, but it is summer) and crowded (to be expected really), but it was interesting and fun. I found that I focused on the animals at the fair for my drawing subjects, not that there was a shortage of people or great things to look at. I figured can draw people nearly anywhere, as well as great scenes, but livestock is not as easy to come by especially up-close, and the cows never ask you why you have made them look fat, or think you suck if you get their face a bit lopsided. Animals just seemed like the less stressful choice for drawing.

This was also my first "big" location to draw in public at and I was unprepared for becoming a part of the fair exhibit as I drew.

My first stop was to the horse barn, and I found that as I stood in the aisle drawing this percheron named Dream, I attracted a crowd of around ten people watching me draw the horse. I had not experienced this before and it was a little unnerving. I was actually grateful that I am a teacher and used to people watching me draw and asking questions, so I was able to continue my sketch without thinking about the people looking over my shoulder.

These horses were beautiful, and the owners were excited by my work, so I went back again later in the afternoon to draw more of them but I did not have much luck.

The photo of my sketchbook shows my attempts at further horse drawings that day. The front on horse face had potential to be a great drawing. The horse was staring me down as I drew, we were face to face and he was not moving anytime soon, or so I thought. A man walked up with his young son to show him the horse, and the little boy had a bag of corn chips. One sniff and my perfect model was at the other side of his stall hoping for a chip. Drawing over.

The next sketch the problem was all me, I started drawing too big. I love the back section of this horse resting in the stall, the sense of shifted weight, but then we move toward the spiral binding and I run out of room and try to compensate for the gap in the page and it is out of whack and over.

I decided at this point (there is one more but trust me its worse than these) that I was out of "horse juice" for the day and needed a break and some water.

I went in search of fellow sketchers thinking to check in early (we were meeting as a group again at 4 and it was about 20 after 3), talk about drawing as we wandered toward our meeting place across the fair from the barns. I found no one and after having some water and watching people I decided I could wander to the cows and look for someone there, or maybe draw one more sketch, although I was certain I was done for the day.

While in the barn I came one a row of cows resting that happened to have a bench across the aisle to sit on, so with little hope of success I pulled out my book for one more quick one before our meeting.

I am so happy that I decided to go look at cows and was really happy I did not let the fact that I was getting tired get in the way of me trying one more drawing, because I got this sketch of Lola from the bench in before my meeting. I also took a photo of this cow and the two others laying next to her that I am hoping to create a watercolor from later.

Just shows that pushing for just one sketch more pays off, sometimes.

Minnesota State Fair Sketch Out

On Saturday I went to the Minnesota State Fair to sketch with the MCBA Visual Journal Collective run by Roz Stendahl. There were about fifteen or so sketchers who joined the group for two meetings at one and four in the afternoon. In the mean time we were all at the Fair with the purpose of sketching, and boy are there things to sketch at the Fair - people, animals, exhibits, rides, and food.

Needless to say, I had a great time, met some new sketchers, and will make a full report in a couple of days. For now I have posted a sheep drawn while at the fair, a handful more sketches to follow in the next couple days.