Two Year's Worth of Dog Show Studies?!

 Don't think I wasn't doing my semi-silly/semi-serious tradition of doing long sketches while watching the National Dog Show on Thanksgiving.  

Trish and that One Viral Sketchbook

A good piece of advice I have learned in my forty..... something* years is this: Just because something is popular does not mean it is good.

Behold, because curiosity got the better of me, that Viral Sketchbook from TikTok:

 

Hoo boy. Where to start.

Well, the cover's pretty sturdy.  It has a nice soft fake-suede feel to it.  The binding is *pretty* good, and it is indeed a lot of pages for the price.  

Except those pages are practically tissue paper.  

I'm serious, they are unreasonably thin and wimpy.  Wimpy in that this paper couldn't make a cut in an overripe tomato.  Thin in that I dot an I while writing in the poor thing and can see the imprint three pages later.  I use my trusty ballpoint pen, but the most appropriate media for this book is None.  A cheap Crayola marker left uncapped in a junk draw for thirty years and in it's dying breath of ink could bleed through the pages.  Fresh markers are obviously a no-go and you can forget about watercolors.  Pencils are fine if they are very soft, and not sharp. 

So in other words, maybe this is a good Sketchbook for somebody out there but not me; none of my preferred drawing techniques work here.  Unfortunately, OCD is a hell of a thing and so I have a sickness that makes me never abandon a Sketchbook in progress.  I'm sticking with the Viral Sketchbook even though it's a struggle.  Note that while scanning this Sketchbook (also a real pain because of how big it is), I have a sheet of white card paper between the pages because otherwise you'd see drawings from the next three pages.  Argh.

Well, anyway, here's "Nature: The Burren, Ireland's Kingdom of Stone", or my sketches of same:

Next time - more sketches from "Nature" episodes, probably!

* - Well, it's like this. I turned 42, which should've been a huge deal, the very week the United States started taking Covid-19 semi-seriously and went into lockdown.  So... yeah.  It's not just me, turns out other Mid-March birthday-havers who remember that experience seem to all be sharing a weird feeling of "what is time, even".  Also I am astoundingly bad at math.  So I don't really know how old I am.  Wait a moment...  Oh, hey, I'm not fifty yet!  Cool!

Sketching from "Nature" - "Santa's Wild Home"

 Happy Christmas in July!  As you know, I enjoy sketching from nature documentaries and I have a big backlog of sketches from "Nature" episodes to share here.  Today, we're going to Lapland in these sketches from... last Christmas.  Yikes.

These and the next few batches of sketches are from a nice little handmade Sketchbook I got at a New Agey store ages ago.  I'd love to recommend it but I think it's one of a kind.  I liked it, though, and it was a lot of fun to draw in.

On Moleskine Altenatives - Again...

Here at the old art blog, I like Sketchbooks a lot.  And I like testing Sketchbooks that are sometimes promoted as Moleskine alternatives.  Over the years, I've met and drawn in quite a few Moleskine alternatives and their quality can vary wildly.  So, in the spirit of the holiday season, here are the four most recent Sketchbooks, reviewed:

I talked a bit about the ZenArt Supplies B6 Sketchbook before and much of my opinion still stands.  I did learn that this Sketchbook takes art markers very well (with insane bleed-through) as seen above, which helps alleviate some of my criticisms.

This awesomeness is the Illo Sketchbook and it is so good.  The pages are nice and thick, and I think I could've easily got away with drawing on both sides, which is a very unique feature among the books I'm reviewing today.  It loves watercolor, pencils, inks, markers and more.  This is, after all, the Sketchbook that saw me through this year's MerMay.  The Illo is my favorite Sketchbook out of the lot and I've already got another one waiting in the wings.

Unfortunately, this means our next two Sketchbooks aren't so great.  This is the Leda Art Supplies Sketchbook.  If you bought a Sketchbook from Amazon recently, you've almost certainly seen it advertised.  I really didn't like the thinness of the paper and that floppy flexible cover is a killer.  And speaking of covers...

We've come to my current Sketchbook and... Look, I love all me Sketchbooks like they are my babies.  This is the Handbook Flexi-Sketch, and about halfway through it's rating a big old "Yikes."  Those pages are thin, thin, thin and they even roll over and give up at the sight of one of my trusty ballpoint pens.  But it's the cardstock-thick cover that seriously messes me up.  What a shame; I really liked the other Handbook I tried way way back in that first post.

So there you have it, four different Moleskine-alikes reviewed.  My verdict is get yourself an Illo, then maybe get another for your Secret Santa.  Have a great holiday season everyone!

Young Loons and Hawks

We had a lot of young Common Loons born this year on the Lake.  I was lucky to be able to observe and sketch them going about their business:







Here are studies of an adult Loon as well as a stressed out Chipping Sparrow mom:



And finally, a real treat. We had young Broad-Winged Hawks fledging right in our backyard! We came to call them the "Hawkward Teens", and it was a wonderful thing to get to watch them grow up.

The Birds of Easter

Had a lovely Easter Dinner with my Aunt and Uncle, who live near a forest and have a bird feeder up all season.  I had the good sense to bring my little Zen Art Sketchbook mentioned in the last post and basically filled the last few pages.  Behold!

Sketches from Nature Documentaries

But not from "Nature", as is my usual tradition.  Instead, here are pages of sketches from two other animal documentaries available on Netflix Instant.

The first is "The Lizard Kings", a "NOVA" documentary about the Monitor Lizards.  It's pretty good, especially since it shows a different side of a group of animals I didn't know much about.



The next page was filled while I watched "The Natural History of the Chicken".  And I must warn you that it is... not about that.  The actual natural history of the chicken, I mean.  Instead, it's one of the strangest and most borderline uncomfortable documentaries I have seen since "The Rock-Afire Explosion".  (Quick review: You know that one moment with the lady in the cat sweater during "Best Worst Movie"?  "The Rock-Afire Explosion" is like that for the entire movie.)  Man, the story of Miracle Mike is gonna haunt me...

New England Aquarium Sketches

I figured we all needed something to help ease our frayed nerves today.  Here are pencil and watercolor drawings of the animals we visited at the New England Aquarium a few days ago:

"The Kestrel's Eye" Sketches

Yeah... we need something adorable to look at right now.  These are pencil sketches and studies I drew while watching "Falkens öga", a leisurely paced wildlife documentary that is available on Netflix Instant.

Be aware, there's no narration, no music, basically no "hand-holding" during the entire film.  I only mention this because a few folks at IMDB evidently had problems with that.  It is basically just the family of Kestrels raising their chicks.

This of course leads to cuteness overload.

"Awwwww...!" - "Animal Odd Couples" Sketches

How about some more sketches I drew while watching "Nature"?  These are all from the episode "Animal Odd-Couples", with a couple of bonus sketches from "Magic of the Snowy Owls".

"It's So FLUFFY!!!" - "An Original Duck-umentary" Sketches

Longtime readers were probably expecting this one.  Without further ado, here are the sketches I drew during the "Nature" episode "An Original Duck-umentary":







If you missed it, this episode was nearly as excellent as "My Life as a Turkey".  Speaking of, that episode should be repeating tonight depending on your PBS affiliate.  This weekend is all about extant theropods anyway, so check both episodes out!

Yet more Sketching from "Nature"!

Drawings I did while watching the "Nature" episodes "Revealing the Leopards", "A Lemur's Tale", and "Born Wild',  You know the drill by now. :)