2014 Ornament Celebrates Sketching

In many of the past years, I add a Christmas tree decoration that memorializes something special from the preceding year.    The year I got my first home computer, I hung a computer ornament on the tree.  The year I went kayaking for the first time, I found a cute ornament of Santa kayaking.  The year I focused on writing, I added an ornament of a little elf writing in a pad with a big pencil.  The year I did lots of biking, I hung a red bicycle ornament on the tree.

The new delight of this year was rediscovering the joy of making art through courses offered by Sketchbook Skool.  Those who keep sketchbooks are a subculture in the art world. How they approach art is through easily portable supplies that enable them to sketch anywhere, that enable easy travel, but locally and internationally, with an easily carried sketchbook, pen and watercolor paints. This year's new ornament celebrates this easy portability.

 There's an aspect of DIY (Do-It-Yourself) to this culture.  Although art suppliers are starting to catch on, generally, products that suit this approach are not easily commercially available so folks create their own. 

An artist's palette my live in a travel paint box made for a certain brand of paint but may hold another brand.  Palettes take over used Altoids boxes and all sorts of other containers.

This light portability makes this subculture almost the opposite of the plein air artist culture.  In the plain air world heavy easels with umbrellas and bulky equipment are de rigeur.

There are already sketchcrawl organizations in big cities around the world with websites that enable sketchers to join their events.  See

     For the San Francisco Bay Area -- http://urbansketchers-bayarea.blogspot.com/
     For Los Angeles, CA -- http://www.sketchcrawl.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=7946
     For Santa Fe, NM http://www.sketchcrawl.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=7942
     For Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN -- http://urbansketchers-twincities.blogspot.com/
     For Washington, DC - http://urbansketchers-dc.blogspot.com/
    
Look up your city or the city you dream to visit and go ...


    






 

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