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My Year in Sketching

1/6/2016

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I've been watching my fellow sketchers post end of the year recaps of their sketch books, and I decided that would be fun for me as well. I'm still new to keeping more intensive and regular sketch journals. I only started seriously in the fall of 2013, and I find that it has immensely enriched the entire spectrum of my work. I'm making prints and paintings from scenes I never would have expected to make more serious art from, but once I had a sketch I liked, the image nagged at me and demanded further attention.

I also love both the casual and narrative aspects of keeping a sketch journal. It's fun to tell more of a story than is possible in a free standing painting or print.

At right is my sketch of the sketchbooks I used in 2015. Three of them are partial, and five (the small ones) exclusively from 2015.

Here are the highlights from each of my sketchbooks for the year.
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My earliest is the last Stillman and Birns that I used. I like their paper a lot, but the 6x8 size is only in spiral bound, and scanning in sketches across that gap is challenging. Their bound sketchbooks open up to a pretty square format, and I really prefer a rectangle to work in. So this was my last hurrah for their books. The first half is the second half of my 2014 Paris trip, but I kept working in it on my return, and a good third of it was 2015. A couple of my favorites were a marker sketch of Mud Island and sketches of Mr. Darcy.
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My first handbook journal, January to April, hooked me on their books. They're a great size to fit in my purse, take water media nicely, and even have a small pocket in the back for museum tickets and other momentoes. This was my hands down favorite page from that one.
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My April to June sketchbook saw the NYC trip with my sister in April. It was very much a theater trip for her birthday celebration.

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I also got back to Shakertown in Kentucky, one of my favorite places to sketch.
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My June to October sketchbook has my favorite cat in the world on my knee and one of my more successful marker sketches.
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During that period I also went to Amsterdam and spent a week sketching both the city and inside the museums.
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And then on to Paris for one utterly beautiful week. 
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My larger handbook watercolor journal is mostly trees. It has some pages from 2014, some from 2015, and I'm using it much more slowly since I don't have it in my purse all the time. Here's the page that was open in my Dixon exhibition. I did a print from this for the show.

I ended up doing a number of prints from the sketches in these books and may well do more. It's good to have the raw material.
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Finally, I'm two thirds of the way through the small handbook I started in October. Sketching ground mostly to a halt during my really busy pre-Christmas season, but I got over the Dixon at the end of the holiday to sketch my show, which was the single biggest moment of my career.
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I also (always) continue to sketch my beloved Mr. Darcy.
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    Martha Kelly is an artist and illustrator who lives and works in Memphis, Tennessee.


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  • HOME
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    • Memphis
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  • OILS
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    • Quarantine Journal
    • Memphis
    • Overton Park
    • Mr. Darcy
    • Mr. Darcy's Odyssey
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    • Dutch travelogue
    • Shakertown travelogue
    • Sketching tools
  • LITURGICAL
    • Special Bulletin Sets
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    • "The Garden"
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  • SHOP