The Fireplace Mantle
Today was SketchCrawl 12.5. SketchCrawl is series of drawing events conceived by Enrico Casarosa. Usually a date is named and groups get together all over the world in different cities to spend the whole day sketching together, then everyone shares their sketches online. A SketchCrawl is like a pub crawl, except with sketching instead of (or in addition to!) drinking.
	Today’s crawl was a little different though. The idea was to have a mini SketchCrawl (and thus the in between numbering) where everyone stays at home to draw. I couldn’t spend the whole day drawing this time, but did manage three sketches.
In the Living Room
In the Bathroom

People will be posting their SketchCrawl 12.5 work in the SketchCrawl Forums. There is also a SketchCrawl Flickr Group where you can find sketches from some crawl events.

Drawing for a full day is an intense experience. Doing so even when you don’t feel like it can yield some interesting, even positive, results. I am always completely wiped out at the end of such a day and others report the same. Such an immersion can really shake loose your drawing brain though and I highly recommend it.

Related:

• More SketchCrawls

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In the Kitchen (larger)

As I drew this, my husband and friends were cooking dinner and I was sitting on the carpet in their living room watching the kitchen. Although the sketch makes the room look empty, it was actually packed with cooks and movement. And, we had a scrumptious meal!

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With rare exceptions, I do all of my sketching these days in a Pocket Size Moleskine (outdated planner) notebook rebound with my own paper. I have created quite a few of these journal sketchbooks and have honed my binding technique along the way. There has been lot of interest in how I do this project/moleskine hack, and so I have written up the instructions for “Moleskine Reloaded”.

Get Them Here

The bookblock is sewn together with a form of Coptic binding, which opens flat and complements the Moleskine very well. This binding method can also be used to produce books with exposed spines, as the stitching is plenty durable and quite attractive. I hope that these instructions are useful, and perhaps inspire some ideas for related projects.

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Custom Cards (larger)

After my recent success with holiday cards, I decided to order some smaller note cards from Shutterfly featuring food sketches I did recently in local Berkeley restaurants. The tapas sketch was made at Bar César, and the sushi at Miyuki. I am very pleased with the results!

These cards are smaller, 3.5 x 5.0 inches, and just big enough to send in the mail. The production on these is not as fancy as on their holiday cards, but they are quite nice none the less and these will be very useful.

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