It's been a while since I posted any sketchbook pictures, so here they are.

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Clicking on any picture will take you to my Flikr account.

These are all doodles. Although it was hard to get started, I find I really enjoy doing them.

Just some simple flowers. Well, maybe not quite simple.  And a squirrel!			Circles I never managed to complete, but may do over time.
I did these while waiting in the doctor's office.  I kind of like them.			Here I was playing with shading and dimension. I like this one, too.
After the plain pencil, I needed some color.			Here I was trying not to think of images, per se.
Dinner at my sister's last Saturday took longer to cook than she expected. I decided to sketch her curly willow while waiting.			This is for this month's Sketchbook Challenge, Close-Up. I was unable to make it look like what I saw.
Another close-up. It's a little better than the first.			This close-up looks very much like what I saw.
This one also looks like what I saw, although it doesn't show up very well here.			Can you tell what any of them are? That's not the intent of the challenge, but it is a side effect

Yesterday I wanted to do something in my studio journal, as I have been neglecting that for the sketchbook and TAST. Another problem is that my studio is a disaster and all the computer problems have kept me from working on getting it cleaned up. (I can take only so much frustration a day.)

However, the corner where I work in the journal was pretty clear, thanks to the cats. Don't ask about the floor. They're good at clearing off my drawing board, which is at an angle, but not so good at picking up anything except sparkly pompoms. Anyway, I gessoed a page and stamped it, then slopped on some acrylic paints when it was dry. I added water to the paints and salted the page and covered it in crinkled plastic food wrap. There were paints left on my palette, so I painted them onto the stamp amd stamped the next page until I used them up.

Voilà!

I love how the texture came out with this. I hadn't added enough water to the paint, so the salt didn't dissolve, but it still adds texture.

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What I love about this one is the color. I purposely picked very spring colors, but they work much better this way than globbed on.

But the best this that I did with these was put them together.  I had to put them into GIMP to get them online, and I couldn't resist playing with them. I'm so glad I did. I can't remember all I did. I remember that I auto stretched the contrast and I may have done the auto white level for the stamped page. I think I used a layer I had auto equalized and did an overlay. (I probably should keep a tablet to write everything I do, but I never remember.) I do remember the final thing I did was to make it seamless. I will be using it to redo the background on this page.

I just love this one! I may use it for some fabric, sometime, too.