Friday, May 3, 2013

April 2013 Art Journal Page

The reason Ellyn and I are planning monthly Inspiration Days is to practice photography and find inspiration in the world around us. (Having fun hanging out with a friend is an added bonus . . . and then, of course, there's always the possibility of lunch . . but I digress.) So, during our outing at Dallas Blooms, I mentioned that I wanted to try sketching something from one of my photographs. Since I'm not very good at drawing, I knew it would need to be something simple. When I saw this small tree that wasn't blooming yet, I joked that I was sure I could draw it!

 
Of course, it's a little hard to see with all the background foliage, so I decided to use the Sketch feature in PhotoShop Elements to give me a better idea of how I might draw it.
 

Wow! After seeing the sketch, I was really glad I didn't say that I could draw the entire scene! However, it did pull out the little tree in the foreground that I wanted to try. Here's what I came up with.


It's not quite as good as Rinda's latest sketch, but it's not too bad for a first try. I decided to use this as the base for my April art journal page. I typed up my journaling in the same format as I've used on my other monthly art journal pages this year.




I completed the page with letter stamps to spell out the month, a group of trees stamped repeatedly in the background, and lightly colored in sky and land.


Who knows, I just might be brave enough to try sketching again soon!

5 comments:

  1. very cool! I have some ideas about doing some doodle pages overlapping my photos? I need to get on that. Love this!

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  2. Oh you must, this is really lovely. What a great idea to sketch your photos, it makes you really look at the details :)

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  3. Your sketch is truly wonderful, Melissa! No one would know it was your first try.

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  4. Thanks for the shout out! I think you did a great job. It really is all about practice. And I do like how you turned it into an art journal page.
    Rinda

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  5. I think it is good for a first attempt so you definitely should have another go. I like how you're trying different things with these summary pages.

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Thanks so much for your comment - it's like a ray of sunshine in my day!