Sketching

My favorite drawing exercise so far from the Drawing Lab book was the zoo trip near the beginning.  I enjoyed it so much that I've repeated it several times whenever we've gone to the zoo or the nature center.  I realized that, while finding funny pictures in the swirly lines is great and all, I really want to work on being able to draw from life better.  I have visions of gorgeous plein air drawings.  So I did a quick amazon search and grabbed the first book they recommended (though I grabbed it from the library, because that's the way I roll) It's - The Sierra Club Guide to Sketching in Nature.   I'm loving it.  Just by magic it turns out to be written by a woman who lives in Missouri, so many of the sketches are of the landscape around me - handy!  I'm about half way through -- and so much of it is stuff that I already know - composition, line, value, rule of thirds, etc. etc.  But I'm loving it anyway, because, even though I know this stuff, it's good to be reminded about it.  The first whole chapter was just supplies.  And much like I will read through the list of basic kitchen equipment and cooking techniques in the beginning of every cookbook I buy, I read through this whole chapter.  Even though it's stuff I know, it's fun to drool over all the pencil types and conte and paint and colored pencil.  And there's always that little tip that I stumble across that I never thought of - like the author always sharpens her pencil with a knife instead of a sharpener.  She spends a few paragraphs describing how much better it is to do it this way (then of course tells the reader to do it however they want) so I tried it today - and she's right!  I love sharpening my pencils with a blade!  I'm never going back. :)

Anyway, I will include some nature sketches in here in the near future.  I'm hoping for great improvement :)