Joe Smith
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Old Sketchbooks - 1991

5/26/2013

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These are some of my favorites from an old sketchbook.  This is a simple little sketch of a field seen through the woods.  A little pen and a little wash and that was all it needed.

It’s only 2 by 3 inches, but it looks like it would work fine at a larger scale.


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I brought this interesting piece of an old branch home and sketched it from various angles.  That piece of wood is still sitting down on my workbench because someday I may want to draw it again.


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This is Royalston Falls drawn with watercolor pencils.  It’s about a ½ hour walk from the road, but worth the trip. The water falls about 50 feet and there’s a nice view from an overhang opposite the falls.  The last couple of times I’ve been there it was with other people, so there was no chance to do any drawing.  I’ve been itching to go back there again with my sketchbook or paints.


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May 4 & 5, S. Royalston Rd, Athol

5/7/2013

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I got myself in a real fiddlehead frenzy.  There’s a patch of swamp along our road and on the edge between the road and the swamp are some really impressive fiddleheads; fat, tall and with a golden crest.  Every time I passed them by I fought the urge to stop.  Finally, late Saturday afternoon, I filled my pack with my watercolor tools and biked down the road.

 I find watercolors to be a real challenge when sketching.  There’s things about them you can’t control, and when I’m drawing I like to be in control.  It’s good for me to fight with them every once in a while.  Maybe it will loosen me up some.

Sunday was another nice day, and I still hadn’t gotten it out of my system.  I decided early to try pastels, and I looked forward to it the whole day.  Pastels are something I have not done much work in at all, and I find them harder than watercolors, probably because they don’t lend themselves to the details I’m fond of.  I made a mess but I was happy with the result.   

Hopefully in another couple of days the fiddleheads will all be ferns and I won’t have to fight these urges anymore.

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May 1, the woods behind my house

5/3/2013

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I decided to do my fiddlehead drawing on a small 3 x 5 scratchboard.  I only had a half hour free.  I carried my chair out into the woods, found a suitable clump of fiddleheads, and started scratching.  This was only the second time I had tried scratchboard en plein aire.  I used a black technical pen to draw the main shapes.  The lines showed up enough to guide my scratching but were not visible in the finished picture.  This is what I had at the end of the half hour.


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That night I finished it off while watching TV.  Total time, less than 2 hours.


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    Some of the best work I've done isn't hanging on a wall; it's sitting in a box in my closet that's full of my old sketch books.  I fill up one or two books each year.  Some of the sketches end up as a basis of a more formal work, but most don't.  They’re more important to me as a pictorial diary and also as on-going training; learning to really see and to understand shape, light and color.

    This blog is to share my sketches as well as my sketching experiences. 

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