Negativity

 

7/29/22 Green Lake

On the fourth day of our potential record-breaking heatwave (not for highest temps of all time but for the most consecutive days of temps in the 90s), I took my early-morning walk through the Green Lake neighborhood. Standing in a shady spot to sketch a car parked next to a tree, I noticed that the light-drenched negative shapes around them suddenly popped out at me. I pulled out a white Gelly Roll, which I knew would stand out well in my avocado green Uglybook. After that, I had fun making several more thumbnails by looking only at the negative shapes. Although I like white on the avocado paper, without black as a counter to it, it lacks umph.

That’s when it hit me: I should be using my brown Uglybook! In my review, I had mentioned that the “Smores” brown was a bit too dark as a midtone, but if I’m using only two tones, it would make an excellent dark.

7/30/22 Maple Leaf

The next early morning (Day 5 of our heatwave), I brought my brown Uglybook on my sketch-walk. Somehow it was easier last winter when I was sketching nocturnes and most of the scenes were too dark to see. In daylight, drawing only the lights instead of darks is a major mind-bender (which obviously means it’s good practice).

In addition to the Gelly Roll, I’ve been using a very opaque white Uni Pericia colored pencil, which I prefer to the gel pen for solid areas and organic marks. It’s so soft, though, that it gets blunt almost immediately. I might try a harder Faber-Castell Polychromos next time.

Now I’m pumped about breaking out a black Uglybook – or a navy one! I probably have too many Uglybooks in rotation, which goes against my usual practice of working in only one or two sketchbooks at a time, but the potential of all these new page colors is exciting. Of course, you can guess what my dream-come-true Uglybook would be – one with multiple colors in one book! I think it’s time to drop Uglybooks a note. 😉

My white party: Gelly Roll and colored pencil