Monday 2 August 2010

Sketchbook Project III

One of the biggest problems when working into a new sketchbook is that new bright white page... so unspoilt, so precious! And so you will often be told to colour the pages first to make them less intimidating. Good advice... but then what? One of the things you can do is to paint onto the coloured page with diluted bleach which removes the colour. These pages were washed with Kohinoor ink first. Take care when using the bleach not to splash your clothes and never use good brushes. Even if you wash them thoroughly they will rot.

When the bleach is dry, you can then draw into the bleached images. Think of this as making marks and lines on your page rather than trying to make that perfect drawing. Also think about what media you use to draw with - I'm using a biro - something that is often overlooked. You do not need expensive pens!

Keep working into the drawings until you are happy with the result.

If you want to take things further and add interest to your sketchbook you can stitch into your pages and tear back the edges like Frances Pickering does with her beautiful books.

By using weaker dilutions of bleach you can achieve more subtle effects such as these.


Again these have been worked into with biro using only a bare minimum of line. You do not have to spend hours to achieve interesting results.


And don't forget to keep your source material close to hand. There is no substitute for actually looking and trying to record what you see.


Although I'm doing these sketchbook project posts for the benefit of my new textile group it's also been fun to see various bloggers taking up the sketchbook challenge. Take a look at some of these:

Textile Trials, Tizduster, Just a Thimbleful and Scented Sweetpeas

20 comments:

  1. Absolutely gorgeous Gina. I will be following along and will have a go when I've caught up with my other challenges. I love your seedheads, always a favourite. Have a lovely week. Carolyn xo

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  2. Thank you! I don't have formal art training and these tips and excellent. I just bought inks in many colours and I will try the bleach tip :)

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  3. Love this idea, may miss it out for the kiddies though lol. Have you tried the splat attack style as inspired by Esme aka baby sweetpea ? If you spead a nice layer of paint on watercolour paper you can then etch out a piccy (whilst paint still wet) in to the paint. I must blog about it really as it was fun and the effect is quite nice.

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  4. This is a great idea with beautiful results. Very inspiring - thank you!

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  5. That's really lovely. My T shirts are all bleached out from pool water, maybe I should try stitching into them to add interest?!

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  6. Oh wow - that is really beautiful. I'm always scared of a pristine new notebook or sketchbook. I admire your bravery and talent! x

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  7. Your designs are so simple yet absolutely gorgeous. I must try those techniques. You've just reminded me that I haven't done my 10min sketch today! Bad girl!! I must put that right after I have looked at the other sketchbooks in the links you gave. Your posts are becoming free online tutorials and very inspirational. Thankyou so much Gina.

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  8. With all the blank and intimidating-with-their-pristine-perfection sketchbooks around my house, it never once occurred to me to take that approach! Thanks, Gina :)

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  9. It's me again - just to say thanks for your comment and you are quite right, your emails don't reach me for some reason. Thankyou for them anyway!

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  10. Brilliant Gina! We had a go with spaghetti but our results aren't that good! Must try again! Lucy x

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  11. Lovely results, working back into the bleached areas is a great idea and your stitched edge looks brilliant, much food for thought.

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  12. Just a thimbleful...

    I had another bash at a lily but was not very pleased with it so didn't send it to you ! But I shall certainly have a go at the bleach - I already have a notebook with all the pages colourwashed, but then I didn't know what to do next! Domestos.....

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  13. these look great Gina, I really like them.

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  14. Gina thank you so much for these sketchbook reminders, I havent started but I will as soon as I have time.
    May be a quick one this afternoon.

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  15. Your pages look lovely. I have started mine but they don't look any where near as good as yours.

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  16. That's beautiful Gina! I love the bleach idea. And that last shot where you show your inspiration!

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  17. I'd forgotten about bleach, thanks for the reminder and I'm waiting to see what else you come up with. It's all very exciting!

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  18. It's wondeful to experiment with different materials.
    Have you tried washing up liquid with paint?
    M x

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  19. OK, OK, you got me, sketch book out, ink and feather. Not brilliant drawings but certainly fun. Next to add a bit of colour. I'll catch up in a couple of weeks!

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  20. These are lovely Gina,thank for sharing them with us.Don't you think it's about time you wrote a book ?

    Judith in Farnborough.

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