koukla carolyn

My purse. I tried doing two versions again—blind and sighted. I was on my lunch break at work so I couldn’t spend as much time on it as I would have liked.

Everyday Matters Challenge #37 is draw your keys or keychain. Yesterday I managed to make these sketches between classes. The keys themselves are very perfunctory—I concentrated on the keychain because it was more interesting to me. I got this monogrammed leather pouch keychain in Florence when I was 16—also the year I started drinving. This keychain has a lot of sentimental value and I would be very upset if I ever lost it.

I did this first sketch in the morning before my Spanish class:

Afterwards I went to the library and started sketching instead of studying. I didn’t do as well on this sketch as I would have liked:

Then I moved to a more comfortable chair and sketched my keychain again. I draped it over the arm of a chair so only the keychain shows:

I got a little bored in class yesterday…

For this week I drew an old box of thumbtacks that I found buried in a drawer in my Grandparent’s house. The lettering was pretty tough, but fun. Afterwards, I sketched it while looking and I came up with this:

I hate to admit this folks, but I look like a man when I wake up in the morning—or at least in this drawing I do. This sketch is for this week’s Illustration Friday: cold. Although it hasn’t really gotten cold yet in Massachusetts, I know it’s coming. And it doesn’t matter because I’m cold all the time anyway, although I’m going to wait until Thanksgiving before I break out the long underwear.

I drew this ceramic candle holder about a month ago at my Yiayia and Papou’s house. It was pretty difficult to do in fact, but all the designs from the glaze were fun to draw. I used a little bit of water on my fingertip to make the ballpoint pen ink bleed a little bit, which caused an interesting buckling of the paper. I’m not really happy with this at all and I didn’t even bother to finish it (see white holes), but it was good practice.

I don’t really look like myself when I’m shrouded in darkness, frowning, and with my hair down. I’m actually surprised at how good this came out considering how dark the room was. It was good for practice, even though I look really angry. 9b woodless graphite pencil.

I bought these shoes last week and boy am I glad I did! The soles are encased in rubber and the uppers are totally waterproof as well. I’ve already christened them in the mud.

As promised, I’ve revisited Everyday Matters Challenge #34. I have to admit that the leaves still aren’t that great and if I wait a week or two they will probably be a little better. But the leaves in general aren’t as colorful as they have been in past years. (Sadly, I’ve read that this is one of the effects of global warming.)

The first drawing I did entirely in Prismacolor colored pencil. I haven’t picked up a colored pencil in a long time and it felt really nice. I liked the way this leaf had a variety of yellow, orange and green in it—it was really fun to draw. I tried to really lay it on thick so as to cover all the white spots in the paper.

The second sketch was also done with colored pencils, but I used them more as drawing pencils. I used mulberry, olive green, dark brown and burnt ochre Prismacolors for this.

I did the last drawing with bic ballpoint before my Spanish class yesterday morning. I use ballpoints when I draw at school because I can’t lug around a lot of art supplies with me. The last two drawings were of the underside of leaves. I thought it would be more interesting this way because the veining was more prominent and there were more curves and shadows.

This icon was a gift to me when I was born and I have always kept it in my bedroom ever since I can remember.