First Entry On My iPad Sketch Journal

Found a neat app - Paper 53 - that lets me make journals and offers sketching tools that include a pencil, fountain pen, broad and thin markers, brush and eraser. Colors are limited but it's fun to figure out how to best use what's offered.

First I tried a stylus that has a rubber tip. No luck at all as response time was way off. My finger worked okay, but I couldn't see where my lines were going. My new stylus that has a felt-like tip, by Stylus-R-Us, was amazing.

Sure am enjoying the iPad :)

Pam Johnson Brickell
Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Scouting for a Sketchcrawl

This was my quick sketch of the wetlands demo at the Anita Gorman Discovery Center, a Missouri Department of Conservation nature center.

It's a beautiful facility with lots to look at and explore...this is the lobby, looking toward the gift /book shop

I'd walked enough that my knees complained, so I tottered over to the tables by the wetlands display to sketch--handy!

I was trying out my Noodler's Konrad pen and some gorgeous new ink also from Noodler's, Kung Te-Chung, a blue so dark it's almost black.  Waterproof, too!  (Their little ink samplers are FUN.)  Brian at GouletPens.com also suggested Polar Brown, which seems to be working well, too.

Here's my setup with my new bag...more on that in a day or so!  Works great, so far...

The site has a wonderful garden, a prairie habitat, a half-size copy of Lewis & Clark's boat, mounts, skulls, turtles, bird feeders and SO much more...we'll definitely be having a sketchcrawl there!

new handbound sketchbooks

new sketchbooks, a photo by vickylw on Flickr.

Well they are together at least . . . I made so many mistakes while adding covers to these Coptic-bound book blocks! I had originally planned on different colors of book-cloth for contrast spines. But I'm still dealing with some vertigo/dizziness, so I kept it as simple as possible. I may add some small bit of embellishment to the front of each as I use them --- that helps to easily tell the front from the back. I may shorten those ribbon bookmarks a bit as well.

The first two covers were glued on before I remembered end papers . . . they seem to work fine with just the first and last pages of the book block used as end papers. Another one has a major folded ripple in one end paper . . . pure carelessness. One book's spine board was too wide. Oh, well . . . .

Most of my previous sketchbooks are the size reached when simply folding/tearing down from the original full-size paper -- ending with 5.5 x 7.5" book blocks. These are a bit bigger this time, about 7 x 9". Three are Kilimanjaro 140 lb cold-press watercolor paper from Cheap Joe's, one is Fabriano Artistico 140 # hot-press, and the last one is a combination of Fabriano Artistico 90 lb. soft-press and Mi Tientes toned papers. Oh . . . and making my own bookcloth worked great! Cotton fabric and white tissue paper put together with Heat & Bond iron-on adhesive.