Pages

Thursday, May 31, 2018

Scotland Sketchbook Part 8

After a week we met up with some fantastic friends to travel from the eastern coast of Scotland to the western coast, including time on Iona.











Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Scotland Sketchbook Part 7

A day trip via boat to the Isle of May, where we saw what the guide said was probably "the last puffin leaving the island."

It was a bummer not to see puffins.  You need to go earlier than mid-August for that.

But the bonus was that when the puffins leave the grey seals arrive.  And there were loads of them!

All of these sketches were done on the spot, in the rain.  Some on a boat.  So they are a little messy.  But they captured the memories!













Thursday, May 24, 2018

Scotland Sketchbook Part 6

Fishing villages have wonderful architecture on hills overlooking the sea, and harbors full of lobster traps, which were a challenge for me to capture!











Tuesday, May 22, 2018

Scotland Sketchbook Part 5

One of our favorite places in Crail was the Crail Harbour Tea Room and Gallery.  We returned several times and I sketched while enjoying terrific treats!










Thursday, May 17, 2018

Scotland Sketchbook Part 4


Here are a few sketches made on the fly as we hiked the Fife Coastal Path. 

We had a week of perfect weather for walking and sketching:  cool, sunny, a little wind to help my paints dry...












Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Scotland Sketchbook Part 3

Welcome to Crail.

We stayed in a lovely fishing village for our first few days in Scotland, enjoying the landscape, and hiking to other little villages.

It had a walled harbor that was fun to sketch from a nearby hill.








Thursday, May 10, 2018

Scotland Sketchbook Part 2

One of the best ways to entertain myself in an airport is by sketching the folks I see there.

I liked working with a pen that wasn't black.










Tuesday, May 8, 2018

Scotland Sketchbook Part 1

I just realized I never posted any of my sketches from my trip to Scotland in August 2017!

So I'm going to do that over the next few weeks, as I do some more traveling.

This shows the art supplies I took.  I always spend five times as much time figuring out art supplies as I do figuring out what clothes to pack.






Thursday, May 3, 2018

More Sketching Dissociation

I'm still playing around with ideas about how to visually render an experience of dissociation during a traumatic event.

I'm working on this as I develop my graphic memoir. 

What I remember is feeling like I was watching the whole scene as if from a traffic helicopter, well above, with a sort of map and routes below.



Tuesday, May 1, 2018

How to Draw Dissociation?


As I work on my graphic memoir, one of the things I know I will need to depict is the dissociation I experienced at the moment of my greatest fear.

Dissociation is, in part, "the experience of detachment or feeling as if one is outside one's body" (American Psychiatric Association). 

That is exactly what happened to me. I vividly remember feeling as if I were high above my own body, flying in some sort of hovercraft, like a helicopter or a blimp, watching myself in a great, wooded landscape, far away from any sort of help.

Here is a shot at it.



I am not super pleased with this idea, but of course, it's just an experimental sketch.  

I am building from the sketches I drew of a wooden figure model.  I have no idea how I would depict trees from this angle (you can see me writing notes to myself about this on the page). 

One thing I want to get better at is visual metaphor.  My brain just doesn't think that way...