2023 Sketchbook Revival

Karen Abend hosted this year's Sketchbook Revival. In this free two-week event, participants are exposed to a range of art instruction (from a total of 28 guest instructors) to inspire, energize and revive creatives. Daily emails were sent with two instructors' video links each day. You could choose to review them or not based on the description of each offering.

I found this year's event was exceptional for me! Tamara LaPorte is always dynamite with her fantastical art. She founded and has been a teacher of the Life Book program for many years. As a participant in a few of those year-long programs, I speak from experience.

Within the last year, I connected with Helen Wells from England and love her bold, abstract and colorful work. For the Revival, she put together a quick lesson of combining different kinds of shapes/marks on a page and then coloring them in however you wanted. My result is what you see below.

Then there was Karen Stamper. She did an extraordinary session on collage and composition. I learned more from Karen about composition and how the eye travels around a piece than from anyone else who has talked about it. Thank you, Karen!

Last but not least was Roisin Cure from Ireland. She is an amazing watercolorist and led participants through creating a beach scene dealing with depth of scene as well as how to draw a foreshortened body when needed. She uses a lighter brown ink for her sketch work (before adding watercolor), and I found that color very appealing. It's not as abrupt as what black would have been. Of course, after the class I had to order her book about Dublin. It has her on-scene paintings of locations throughout the city and stories to accompany them. After receiving the book today, I'm even more taken with her work. I just love her approach to the art she makes!

Roisin and one of the other instructors mentioned Fude pens in their videos. This type of pen has a nib that is intentionally bent. That nib is supposed to provide the ability to make a greater range of thin to thicker lines than other pens. I'm not sure how it compares to calligraphy pens, but I'll be finding out soon. That's because I ordered one today, and I have the calligraphy pens to be able to experiment and see how they differ.

Thank you, Karen Abend, for you and your team's efforts in putting together such a worthwhile event! I really enjoyed Sketchbook Revival 2023!

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Cay Denise

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