This year Copic Design Team member, Debbie Olson, will assist Ken (President Emeritus of Imagination International, Inc., importer of Copic Markers.)

The plan is to spend two weeks at a tiny art school in Umbria (1 1/2 hours North of Rome), each day traveling to a nearby hill town to sketch, and returning to our base in LaRomita School Of Art. We are taken care of by two Italian cooks, and we stay there in apartments remodeled in a 15th Century Monastery.

The cost for this two week workshop is $3,600 plus airfare. It includes food, room, instruction, and all local transportation as we travel each day out to new hill towns. Other costs may include a few lunches, snacks and gifts.

If this adventure is of interest to you, please write to ken@copicmarker.com for more information and a list of FAQ.

Visual Journaling

The importance of keeping a sketchbook can never be emphasized enough. If you can get in the habit of sketching every day, you will undoubtedly see great improvement in your drawing. According to Walt Stanchfield, who practically wrote the book on Disney-style animation, “Quick sketching is the shortest route to training yourself for capturing those spontaneous gestures and poses that are so essential to good drawing”. It is important to keep in mind that visual journaling is the capturing of events in your sketchbook as you perceive them, in your own experiences. Draw your breakfast, draw your lunch. Draw your clothes wrinkled on the floor as you threw them just as you got home, and record your thoughts about the event.

Last year, I traveled to Hong Kong and Indonesia where I experienced many things that I had never before known. Everything interesting that I heard, saw and read I recorded in my sketchbook as I explored these new places, and today I have a collection of images that tell a story far better than any photograph because every line that I drew came from my own personal translation of the event.

I call this process ‘visual journaling’ because it is the combination of expressive sketching and in many ways you assume the role of reporter, sometimes I like to imagine that something I am currently sketching is something I have never before seen, like a visitor on a distant planet or far-away land.

Try and make a sport out of sketching, call it a mental exercise. You can use these sketches as reference for later finished pieces or allow them to be their own works to serve as reminders or a chronicling of the past. Feel free to write all over the page, try to use text as a graphic element; after all, letters are graphic symbols that we have trained our brains to ‘read’.

Resist the tendency to worry what others will think of your drawings or writings, these can be completely private, this is your own personal diary as an artist!

You don’t have to visit some far-away land to make interesting drawings in your sketchbook. Simply take a walk and find a street you’ve never gone down before, explore your neighborhood, have fun, and keep it loose!

Copic products used in these images: Sepia Tone Kit, warm gray Sketch markers, Multiliner SPs

Find Jackson on the web:
Web Site: http://www.jacksonroot.com
Copic Color: http://www.copiccolor.com/Jackson

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The Double Sided Tape (by X-Press It) will hold just about anything together. Seriously. This high-tack tape is easy to apply, has an extremely strong hold, and works seamlessly on a variety of surfaces and applications. It’s also only about the thickness of a single piece of tissue paper, so it won’t show through from behind on paper or mixed media projects. From work with photos and framing, to card making, papercrafting, and even instant hemming (how cool is that?!), this double sided tape is one of the most versatile items to keep on hand in your studio. You’ll reach for it all the time. Available in three widths: 1/8″, 1/4″, & 1/2″. Acid free.

Amazing sketchbook paintings by Wendy MacNaughton. According to her blog she does these “five days a week, twice a day, twenty minutes each way” on her commutes.  Looks like mostly pen, ink and watercolor. Really well done.

via @I_Brontosaurus

Hollis Brown Thorton is a fine artist I’ve been paying attention to for a while now. I really dig his moody abstractions and use of photography and appropriated video game imagery. He also does quite a bit of work in his moleskin sketchbooks in marker. This Printed Circuit Board image just went up on his tumblr today. Also check out the work on his website and flickr stream. I have no idea what brand of markers he uses but it doesn’t matter. He does great stuff.