Sometimes, the Back of a Head

In fall of 2016, I enrolled in a new course being taught by the fantastic Roz Stendahl on design.  You can learn more about it and all of Roz's classes here.

What I wanted to take from the class, at least initially, was a way to make my scribbly journal pages look neater, but without having to neaten up my scribbling.

I don't know if that makes sense.  I still want my fast, capture-the-moment, scribbly sketches, but I wanted the pages themselves to be more pleasing to look at.

First major lesson for me:  MARGINS!!   Keeping some white space around the page (except in the case of intentional bleeds) makes things look a lot more tidy.

This, by the way, is easier said than done.

Here is the first sketch I did trying to keep margins and white space in mind.

I drew this particular angle on my mother because I was sitting inside at the table, trying to figure out what I wanted to sketch, and she was sitting outside on the front porch.  I could see her through the window.   I was taken with the notion of trying to capture a portrait of someone just using the back of their head, and their posture.

I will say, this looks exactly like my mom!

This is also the first scribble I did with a new bent nib Hero pen, loaded with DeAtramentis document brown ink.

My hope is to do a bunch of scribbles with this pen and get to know it, even as I am learning more about page design.