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Working and learning on large 11’ x 14’ crappie paper.

Hand full of Makers and some big paper.

Sheets of blank paper taller than your thumb and to big for my backpack all screaming at me to get to work. For some reason the tooth and feel of this book is more attractive to me than the super thick and slick Bristol board book, or the 140lb cold press watercolor paper book. I’ve figured it out… it’s the same paper (but way bigger) as my first sketchbooks back when I was at DASH (design and architect senior high) in Miami. Mr. Milanez would hand them out like candy. I would burn through them in a few weeks, chewing them up. Nothing great but I couldn’t get over the fact that they just handed you another one.

red marker, girl on a bike
Super Fresh, I always wanted to ride like this.

What’s in the bag?

A bag full of markers and this book that reeks of high school made it easier to let go and have fun. I brought this bag with me thinking that I was going to do rock some ill outlines, pieces and fill-in, but I couldn’t get that started. Here are some bikes, dogs and other things that did come out.

Bag of markers
BAG-O_MARKERS
Drawing of Dog on colorful sheet
Clem the dog napping next to me while I work. She gets lots of time in my book by always being near by.

Why using crappie materials could be a good thing.

Drawing on kinda crappie and large paper changes something. I think it’s the need to ‘finish’ that usually comes with larger formats. That feeling is gone. Another weird thing, the markers which are great for filling in large areas felt limited on this large format. I would fill the whole page with color in my 8×10 black book (ask me to show you). So line work became super important. I tried incorporating washes but the cheap paper didn’t like that. So line work is king!

Lesson learned.

I’m still learning that I have lots of hang-up. Getting free and removing myself from the work is going to take a minute, it was easier with this book. The more I work, the more I understand (maybe). I need to practice F$#king up stretched canvases. Media surface shouldn’t hinder the work, but stretched canvas vs found cardboard influences my work in profound ways. Similar to working on post-it notes.