My SIngapore / Linda Xuereb book

This is a sketch up of a painting that I was working on for the Singapore 50th anniversary this year for a group show. The idea plays off the 'city in a garden' to which Singapore is to be. I added a map of the island in the background with the drawing on translucent paper above. I am glad that I experimented with this to observe the restrictions of these materials. The transparency material does buckle and paint does not adhere so well. Overall, I am happy with the results. I also included the painting for the group show created over the winter break (shown below).

 

Nobody Panic (Kelly McFadzen)

Take the time to smell the flowers, swim, or cast a line and fish.

No need to panic-

Play Is Soul Food (Erin Caskey)

So when you are out and about doing what you love to do, it is soul food. I wasn't sure on how to approach this, but wanted something that was a moving meditation. I think the action and adventure in this scene captured the essence of soulful play. There are many layers of paint, markers, oil pastels, collage, collagraphs, and the list goes on and on to make this splash of movement.

Making new memories while reflecting on old

For this month, I worked in Heather Rodocker's sketchbook. Her theme is "Childhood Memories". I love seeing the sketches before mine and how our lives can be so similar, even in our differences. 

It was challenging to settle on one. Should it be a happy, a sad, a weird memory? Which one is actually important to me enough to draw? For some reason, I keep coming back to the memory of playing Monopoly with my sister. The whole range of human emotion played out: joy, frustration, trust, taste of victory and defeat. Epic battles that would last days during the summer. The next summer, she moved to another state. 

I started with the Monopoly board and didn't know what to do next. My sister and I were skyping when she suggested changing the street names to places near the house. I looked up the address on google. How was it that my whole world existed within a few block radius of each other? What a different life my son is having!

Then, thinking of that house, our neighbors, and the massive fig tree in the backyard, I knew what to draw. My sister and I would push each other to go higher and higher, we were in charge of picking figs for my mom's jam. How normal a life we had.

I drew the house with marker, then finger-pained with acrylic paint. I figured finger-painting was the best way i could connect to the theme of "childhood memories" . 

Many years later, my sister moved back into that house with her own family. When i visit, board games are still time well spent with loved ones. 

Matthew's 'what's brewing' (Becky Green's Book)

This work is stemming from a printmaking course that I am teaching that relates to linoleum project of the expressive portrait while using the principle of design 'emphasis'.

I thought to use converging lines to focus direction towards the figure. This image sort of describes what is brewing with me currently in my life. The rings are cut-up images of maps from places that I have visited over time (experiences that I have attained). They are floating around my head and some of them are deposited into my thinking and transferred into my speech.

Although I don't necessarily feel that what I am saying is translating my thoughts so well, so I am spreading a rambling noise from my mouth. So I suppose what's brewing is a bunch of gibberish!

What's Brewing in Becky's Book

I initially intended to design some homebrew labels for my sketchbook. As a family, we're embarking on a lot of "brewing", and I had visions of clever faux-beer names that reflect the idea-percolating (and good microbrew sipping) that takes place in our quiet evenings.

As I doodled, and as we mused as a family, I realized that a lot of our mental "brewing" comes from two things in our lives: An old, about-to-fall-down barn and our ties to a third generation pear orchard. As people that have lived away from the homestead for over a decade, it's hard for us to sort out what we'll someday do or where we'll someday land or how we'll raise our completely unrooted son. So, we dream and we scheme. The dreams get large and unwieldy--tentacles all over the place of what might happen.

Returning to the sketchbook,  I took two beer mats and turned them into doors. If you flip them over, there's some embarrassing scribbles in there of what might become of the Green ranch or the 100-year-old barn. Looming over it all is our octopus of too-many-thoughts...it's a beast that is as stressful as it is liberating...and maybe someday we'll figure out what it's pointing to.

Patrick's Hamster Wheel of Life

Sandy's sketchbook  "Hamster Wheel of Life" was passed to me right during a period of time where there was just no possible way I was going to complete the sketch - I was too busy.  So, I passed the book on and am just now getting back to it.  I had a crazy 5 weekends in a row where I was not home in Singapore and in that time I had a lot of fun and accomplished many things, but rest, relaxation and sketchbooks were not among them.  We did LegoLand and a trip to Phuket as a family before I set off for an R&D trip, then I had a few days in Singapore before heading to KL to co-lead a Google Apps BootCamp, present a few sessions and a closing keynote for the Google Summit.  I capped that string off with a few days of work then a trip to Hong Kong Disney.  Phew.  A slow Saturday of sketchbooking is my reward.

I tried to capture the idea that all the events and fun were keeping me moving while at the same time grinding me up.

#learning2 Sketch

I learned a lot this weekend at the #learning2 conference.  I had an amazing opportunity to be in the presence of so many creative educators that good things were bound to rub off on me (and fittingly for Kelly's theme, it was absolutely NOT a waste of time).  I was fortunate to attend a 1 hour session on "visual note-taking" where the unbelievably talented Nicki Hambleton (@itsallaboutart) got us going taking notes on an iPad with Adobe Ideas.  The section on "A Whole New Mind" in my sketch is what I completed during her session, and the rest of the stuff on the page is some doodling I did afterwards, plus some photos taken along the way (thanks, +Jay Atwood +Nicki Hambleton @klbeasley )

I've been inspired.  I'm purchasing a stylus and there'll be no turning back for me!

Prague CZ

This week I was inspired by Patrick's book, In the Distance, to go back to special place that we both have in common, Prague.  Sifting through our photos with Lisa and Isabelle, we relived those special years, and it made me wonder why don't we do this more often. In trying to capture this in artistic form, I used a fun online tool called shape collage. Thanks, Patrick, for inadvertently nudging us to remember those important moments in the distant past that helped define us who we are today.

Becky recycles in the mystery sketcher's book

I learned that I like a few boundaries, and when a book doesn't have a theme, I have to work a little harder. It's not bad, but it makes me think. The mystery sketcher had a vibrant geometric tic-tac-toe of patterns that Leigh built upon with likewise embroidery. Betsy collaged  a Degas-like woman covered in keys over a whirling dervish. Where's the common thread???? And so I ended up with a collage of my own that echoed some of their choices. But the real message in it was that  sometimes the best ideas are the ones we've used before. I don't think ANYTHING in the sketchbooks is cheating, but after some discussions with sketchers this weekend, I realized that we all have our internal "rules" we're following. I believe good work can be already-used work, and I made myself do it. Almost every image is one I've drawn for something else at some other time.

Rhian's entry in Sandy's book

I tried to capture Sandy's Hamster Wheel theme through a spiral of time...again, I found myself with only a black marker at hand and it ended up looking a little plain so I thought I would use a ribbon to highlight the spiral.

Little did I know that what sounds like a good idea to begin with often turns out to be a ROYAL pain in reality :) However, snipping and gluing the ribbon and trying to get it to turn nicely became quite relaxing after a while and loads of fun for our kittens!

Am I Really Cut Out For This?

This whole sketchbook gig terrified me to begin with.  I’ve never thought of myself as an artist, and I see a lot of artsy types in this group.  Needless to say, I was totally intimidated, and my first piece was a real struggle.  I decided to go with collage as my medium since I can’t actually draw anything, and then I did my best to block the whole project out of my mind until the Saturday before it was due. That day, I traipsed over to the Holland Village magazine stand and waddled away with more than $100 dollars worth of magazines.  I spent about eight hours that afternoon and evening flipping through pages, tearing things out, trimming edges, and spreading a wide variety of cutouts across the blank pages of my sketchbook.  Nothing looked right though.  I left a limp design on the page, shuffled dejectedly to bed, and hoped inspiration might strike overnight. 

When I woke up in the morning, the only inspiration I could find was a 50 dollar bill in my wallet, so I traipsed back over to the magazine stand, picked up another few magazines, and threw in a National Geographic for good measure.  When I sat down to my sketchbook again, I wiped it clean of cutouts and started over.   One of the things that had been bothering me was the white space lots of little cutouts tended to leave behind, so I started looking for interesting backgrounds. 

Then Scott Riley called.  I whined like a frustrated Kindergartener, told him I was not cut out for this gig (pun intended), and he said something that changed my perspective on the project completely.  He said, “You may not be an artist, Betsy, but you ARE a designer.”  It’s true.  I’ve always loved design.  When I was a kid, I used to play architect.  When I visit my parents during the summer, I enjoy rearranging their family room while they go to the store.  Here in Singapore, a number of friends have asked me to help them place their furniture, hang their art, showcase their tchotchkes, that sort of thing. 

So when I set down my phone and went back to my sketchbook, I looked at it with a designer’s eyes.  Quickly I realized that my problem before was that my page was a cluttered cacophony with no focus.  I needed to strip it down to the minimum, but still fill the page with something interesting that would also fulfill the theme.  National Geographic saved me.  In fact, it has played a part in each of my first three designs.  Now I try to complete each sketchbook entry with the fewest number of cutouts possible while still drawing people in with some combination of images they may not have thought to put together themselves. 

Maybe I AM cut out for this gig after all.     

"The Hamster Wheel of Life" - Exploring in Sandy's book

I love Sandy's first sketch and her theme: The Hamster Wheel of Life.  At this time of the year especially, I often catch a glimpse of our calendar, my eyes bug out and I think, "Seriously?! It's the end of April already?!"  May is always a wash.  And then it's June, and I finally breathe and I promise myself that next year, I'm going to be better at guarding my time and being balanced. Sandy's first sketch perfectly captured the myriad ways our lives often get us stuck on that hamster wheel, and her (awesome) line "strive to be the toad" inspired my collage.  Sandy reminded me that I need to stop moving so much;  it is important to plant our feet, take a breath, and take in what is around us.  Whenever I do this, I am always overwhelmed with a feeling of gratitude.

My creation is a collage consisting of thank you notes received, thank you notes we've had printed (that's our lake up there in the top right - 25 teaching days away, but who's counting?!), and the stamps and paper we use to make our own.    I also used some stationary that looks busy to me, with all of those spiralling little wheels, as part of the back drop, reminding me to step off the wheel, take a moment, and be thankful more often.

One of these kids is not like the other ones

Betsy's "Outliers" themed book arrived in my hands as I was thinking about writing. I was wrestling with the balance of humor and tragedy and working on personal narratives that I worried would make my readers wince (but made me chuckle). I was also listening to a lot of David Sedaris and Anne LaMott. After all these weeks absorbing wit and self-deprecation and also pondering how to write memoir and not be disgusted with oneself, I decided--enough already--and let a little dirty laundry air. Some of us were slow to gain wisdom. I spent most of my 20's on a runaway train of folly and now-hilarious choices. The result is a silly clothesline of nine former dates: Flip the card, read the narrative, and find the outlier!  (Becky)

Home (?)

I chose the theme Home for my book; it was the one thing that kept coming back to me when I was trying to come up with ideas. No doubt the imminent end of the school year had a strong influence on my state of mind.

"Home" (at least for me) is not easy to define. Having been an expat for over 30 years I feel that a home comes in many different shapes and forms, associations and emotions, people and places so I chose words that spoke of home to me, or at least leant themselves to my definition of it. It's ended up looking like a page out of my diary from the 1980's though……and so it begins ;)

A clutter inspired minimalist

We're always trying to streamline and declutter our lives at our house, and yet we find ourselves crowding our art/thinking spaces with obnoxious, messy bulletin boards. I've thrown them out with every one of our moves, but we always decide we need 'em. We'll never be the people with the grown-up office space; we are still college-dorm-room-thinkers, and so when I pondered my theme of "what inspires you," I wanted to create something that looked a little like those inevitable patchwork bulletin boards I stare at when planning my next creative endeavor. Usually I need color, but this time, since coloring books are something I collect as an adult (okay, so maybe we should label ourselves farther back than the dorm...it is possible that we're still in middle school around here), I wanted to evoke those thick black lines that always inspire (and maybe save an hour or two).  --Becky