Art on the Go
Artistic and crafty assignments for travelers
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Art on the Go: Art School: Line Basics – Blind Contour Drawings
A blind contour drawing is where you only look at the object you are drawing, and not at the paper you are drawing on. The purpose of this type of drawing is to have your brain focus solely on the object – to really look at it and see it for all it’s details. Obviously, since you are not looking at your paper, it doesn’t always translate like you expect, but sometimes these haphazard drawings can be quite fun. Blind contours also have the benefit of improving your eye hand coordination. It’s a simple art exercise that does not take much time, but can build your drawing skills and produce…
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Illustration News: New Road Trip Sticker Pack for Pic Collage App
I’m sure many of you know– I am a huge fan of a good road trip! There’s just nothing like packing up your car and heading out onto the long highway to places unknown (or known!) I’m excited to announce that I’m bringing my illustrations (and love of road trips) to your phones! I’m having a great time working with the app, Pic Collage and licensing sticker pack art for them in various themes. The stickers are used in their app to embellish the photos you take when you are out and about. This road trip theme was my first foray in illustrations for phones, and I’m looking forward to…
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On Location: Spend the Day Painting a Mask in Venice, Italy
Whenever Carnevale di Venezia time comes around, I always think of the great experience my family and I had in Venice painting our own mask. It was our first trip to Venice, and although we were going to be there during the summer, I could not get the lore of the magical masks worn at Carnival time out of my mind. Before we left on our trip, I did a few searches and was excited to find a place called Ca’Macana in the heart of Venice where they conducted educational classes and mask making workshops. Ca’Macana is one of the oldest mask making workshops in Venice and has a rich tradition of…
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Art on the Go: Art School – Line Weight
Experimenting with line weights in your sketching can open up a world of possibilities to your drawings. There’s something quite clean and straightforward about a line drawing that is created using one single line weight. It’s one of my favorite go-to styles when creating a travel sketch. But playing with different line weights can also allow for a whole host of effects (subtle or bold) to enhance that same sketch. So, how does one achieve a varied line weight in a drawing. Well, it’s quite simple. You can use varied weight pens, or a brush pen. Just as pencils have many different types of lead that vary in softness (that change…
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Art on the Go: Art School Line Basics: Contour vs. Gestural vs. Implied
One of my goals this year is to kick off a new Art on the Go series called “Art School.” Although I attended art school many, many years ago, like any profession, it’s always great review to go back to the basics and brush up your skills. I hope in going through my journey I can also inspire you to pick up your pencil, pen, or brush and join in. There are so many wonderful things to draw either at home or on a trip, so time to get started! Today’s “Art School” lesson will be studying 3 basic types of line drawing; contour, gestural and implied. These lines are the basis…
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Art on the Go: Sketching in a Cemetery and Creative Projects Beyond Halloween
The other weekend my daughter and I headed to Half Moon Bay for some sketching with my local en plein air art group. Although I live relatively close to this moody seaside town, I have never truly explored it to find out all the great sketching opportunities it provides. Our mission was to sketch around the downtown area. Some members of the group are local residents and they had a whole host of good locations to draw, one suggestion being a cemetery only 2 and 1/2 blocks from Main Street. Given it was October, and Halloween was approaching, I was sold! A cemetery sketch outing is a great way to celebrate the…
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Art on the Go: Finding Cultural Sketching Experiences Right at Home
Sometimes you don’t have to hop on a plane and travel far to find a culturally rich location to sketch. It’s amazing what may be right near home. For instance, in the Bay Area where I live, within 30 minutes I can be in a Japanese Tea garden, one of the countries largest Chinatowns, and a thriving Pakistani community filled with restaurants and unique supermarkets. With two kids in school, my life doesn’t always offer the freedom to jet off on a whim, but I still crave sketching scenery of far off lands. Just doing a little research on the web has opened my eyes to many of these same experiences in my own backyard. For…
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Art on the Go: Make a Map of Your Stay
Sometimes a visit to a new place can be a whirlwind. You arrive, you tour, and the next thing you know you’re packing up and heading home. Once back, you try to remember what you did and draw a blank! Well here’s a simple art on the go project to quickly pull out the highlights of your trip – sketch a map of your stay. The map of your stay could be of just one day, it could be of a full week or an entire month. It can be of all the restaurants you ate at, all the hotels you stayed in or all the monuments or sites you…
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Art on the Go: Sketching on a Foreign Newspaper
Whenever I travel, I love to buy a newspaper or two in the country I’m visiting. Although I’m not much of a linguist, I enjoy browsing through the articles, photos, ads and editorials to try to decipher what is being said. My other reason for picking up a local newspaper is for the paper itself. Foreign newsprint can make a great background to a travel sketch. It adds dimension and a hint of context to the location you are sketching. The process for sketching on newsprint is pretty much the same as sketching on paper. You can easily just tear out a part of the paper and start to sketch.…
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Art on the Go: Photography Light Trails – Lights on Lombard
Playing with light trails is one of the most gratifying photography tricks out there. An unexpected, spectacular shot can actually be quite easy to achieve. You only need a little technical information, and the rest is all luck! This past summer, I headed to San Francisco for a fabulous night photography class. One of the exercises was to photograph car lights on the crookedest street in San Francisco, Lombard. The street, although lit up with lamp posts, is pretty dark. To see the zig zag of the car lights driving down the curves really captures the feeling of the street. It also provided a creative view of one of the…
