Sasa's Sketchbook 3

This is for Illustration Friday theme Childhood.  I wanted to try something different. I didn't do any planning, just started drawing, and now I have loads of ideas of how I should have done this differently. Well, next time...

This is where I have spent quite a lot of time during last couple of days... Finally got myself to draw 'the new sofa', quite different from the sofa in the previous apartment . The latter was definitely more comfortable but we gave it away because it didn't fit in the new flat (both style and size wise). This is a hard futon sofa bed thing but I like the streamlined look. Happy new year to all you wonderful people who visit my blog. I am off to Tenerife tomorrow and hope to return with bunch of sunny sketches to share.

I started doodling today around this week's Illustration Friday topic Silence. I had no plan in mind, just drew whatever came to my mind: the lady who told me to be quiet at work this week when I talked to my colleague in our open office, sunset by lake, underwater scene, night sky, the Chinese word 安静... Very pleasant and stress free approach to the theme, may try it again :-) (I have been *silent* for a long time.  My excuses: hunting for a flat, moving, going for a holiday, decorating the new place.... But now I am happily settled and have a beautiful workspace so no more excuses. It is a promise.)

Doodling while watching football... Black sketch pad is not really for the nightless nights of midsummer but couldn't resist it when I found it from my art storage. Need to start using it more.

Makeup (we love colour!) My submission for Illustration Friday, the theme was 'vanity'. I wanted to play with colors and do something 'half-abstract'. This looks better in real life, the gold and silver paint I used does not really show in the scanned version.   For some reason I really like drawing makeup. Not that I do it often, the above was my third try. Last time I tried was in 2011 when I did an ink brush work that is maybe more 'my style'.   Makeup (2011) Before that I sketched make up in 2008, a quickie by the bathroom sink :-)

    I use these stones as paperweights when I paint. Most remarkable thing about them is that they are totally unremarkable, just ordinary stones I picked from Beijing streets when I lived there. Oh, there is also one toy car I picked from my home street in London.

I also did a sketch in V&A cafe. I was fascinated by the patterns on the walls. The side room where I was sitting was very dark so I didn't really see the colors I used, but they turned out very vibrant (but not exactly life like). Which reminds me of this colorful letter that arrived this week. I was lucky enough to win Sybille 's amazing New Year's card. I don't think I will send it to anyone, it is too pretty...

Back. Missing my blog friends. So much to catch up...

Had fun with watercolors (and white gouache).

A scene from Notting Hill Carneval Can you find a policeman talking on a mobile in this picture?

  I was drawing this week in Kensington Roof Gardens, which is an amazing hidden oasis in busy Kensington. It is hard to belief you are actually in a roof of a building. There are trees and flowers, ponds and bridges, a waterfall, a Spanish style villa, ducks - and even flamingos! I would have liked to sketch one but unfortunately didn't have time . As you can see, I wasn't alone, we had a quite big group of sketchers there, which meant I spent most of the time chatting about anything between toilet habits around the world to fostering children, and not that much drawing.   (Maybe I shouldn't have added that fence to the sketch, I think it looked better before.)

Early June there was a demonstration in London against the mass slaughter of badgers. The dairy farmers claim that badgers spread bovine tuberculosis whereas the largest study of tuberculosis suggests that the industry's own practices are the real reason behind the crisis and killing badgers wouldn't help in any meaningful way.

Watched football practice in Queen's Park. The coach tried to teach the kids to keep moving and passing the ball to each other. But most of the time they forgot and just stood there staring.

Because I am lazy, I am using a sketch I did last weekend in Richmond. This is Richmond Bridge that crosses the Thames = the liquid highway. I was getting quite cold when drawing the river scene, so afterwards went to this boat cafe to get a cup of warm liquid = Earl Grey.

  When I was at school we were discussing what human evolution might mean. Maybe we would have larger heads to house enormous brain, huge lungs to cope with pollution, big nose with plenty of nose hair to filter that horrible air, and tiny thin legs that come with the sedentary lifestyle... And maybe we will be bright orange thanks to thinning ozone layer and increased UV radiation (or maybe it is just fake tan). Spring Look 3013

This is my version of one of the paintings of Qi Baish i, my favorite Chinese painter. The original can be found from here .

Another boring flower sketch, sorry...

I can see train tracks from my window so decided to try to capture a passing train at night.

Flowers gone wild... I was testing how watercolor paper would work with my ink painting. Unfortunately ink always looks quite dull on it when compared to 'rice paper', which shows magnificent shades and nuances. But the problem with rice paper is that painting gets crinkled and needs to be mounted on a stiffer backing paper, which is a very difficult process. Currently I am sending my work to China to be mounted but that is time consuming. There must be soneone in London who has mastered the traditional Asian wet mounting technique?