Tiny Painting Sketches

I spent some time the other day just doodling with paint, trying to come up with new ways to approach the kind of aesthetic I like. These were all done on tiny cards, about 2"x3". 

Dream

I've been having really vivid dreams lately, with bright colors and indelible imagery. The most unusual one included a scene where I looked up and saw these "clouds" made of writhing, tangled subway trains, with arms coming out of the windows so they looked like millipedes. My main response to this in the dream was just to think "Looks like it's going to rain". I haven't forgotten the image even several days later, so I thought I'd try to sketch it.

Faceted Maps

The other day I was doodling map ideas in a coffeeshop, and started building this:

      

It's not maplike in the way my other drawings are, but it's got the same kind of linear fractal aesthetic. I definitely think of them as roads connected into neighborhoods, they're just arranged a little differently. I played around with color when I got home:

I'm not sure how much I like that, though. I think they need some kind of color, but maybe I'm just not good enough with colored pencils to get the effect I want with them. They might work out better with a light watercolor wash that changes over the course of the drawing. I do want to delineate "neighborhoods" with color, and that might be a good way to do it. I started building another drawing on watercolor paper, using archival pens:

I've put this project on hold to work on new "mosaic" style maps (more on those soon!), but it was a sort of promising side project. If anyone has any ideas about extending it, let me know in the comments!

On RSS

For all of you who check this as an RSS feed, I updated my banner image. It'll be redundant for others, but this is the sketch I used:

I also noticed that the RSS feed format is pretty unattractive. I will work on future posts with that in mind, but for the optimal aesthetic experience I would recommend checking out new posts in the blog format instead of reading them on RSS. The blog background shows off sketches more attractively, and the formatting isn't all weird. Google Reader doesn't have the formatting problem, but in my opinion it's still hard to see light sketches against a white background.

The only downside of not using RSS is that I post pretty much every day, or sometimes twice a day (like today!). I'm pretty busy most of the time so that fact surprises even me, but it's important to me to put out the things I keep making all the time. So in order to avoid missing posts you might enjoy, make sure to check often!

- Emily

Sketch

I had some free time between answering phones last week, and decided to draw my environment.

New Old Drawings

I just recently dug up some old watercolors and sketches for a job interview, and am in the process of posting them to my site. Some of these are from an independent study I did sophomore year....and the portrait in pencil is from my very first art class at Brown! It's old, but I still like it and think of it when I think of realistic sketches that I've done.

This is just a sample - more can be seen at my website.

Designing Headbands

I thought I'd publish some pages from my sketchbook to show how I draw out my ideas.

A bouquet, a thistle design, headbands and a necklace:

Headbands and fascinators:

I hope I find time to make everything!

Subway Man

This man was across from me on the subway today, and looked very sketchy with his red lollipop. 

Equipment

I drew this while watching people DJ for MIT student radio. It was kind of funky being there.

Also, I apologise for not updating regularly these days but I've been busy at jury duty! I have some new scans now though so expect more soon.

City Pieces

Sketches

People on trains