“Drawing Lab” is Launching!

The official publication date for “Drawing Lab” is Thursday, July 1st. This will start a month-long celebration here at Snowball Journals, where there will be drawing giveaways, special “drawing assignments” and links to eight (8!) book giveaways, each hosted by a different DL contributing artist!

But to start off the month, you can help me celebrate on July 1st one of these ways:

1. I will be at the Pioneer Square Artwalk from 10am – 9pm with a table of books (I’ll be in the Art in the Park section). If you’re able, please come by and say hi!!!

2. At 1pm Pacific Time (4pm Eastern Time), I will do my first-ever RADIO show!! Here is the link. Rebecca E. Parsons will be interviewing me on the “Artistically Speaking Talk Show”… I hope you will tune in!!

Ebay Auction for “A Place to Bark”

Hello!

The piece I did recently for the fundraiser is bound in a handmade book with 28 other originals pieces! It’s a cool idea and the auction ends today… go here check out the listing, or here to see a slide show of the whole book.

Airplane Drawings

One of my favorite ways to draw is to “find” characters or creatures in existing random shapes, such as sidewalk cracks and, more recently, land patterns seen from airplanes! Here are some recent sketchbook pages:

Actually overheard this as part of a conversation on the plane.

All of the above images started out as a quick drawing like this:

From shapes seen out of my window…

I hope you’ll pick a window seat on YOUR next flight!!

This and That

1. You guys!!!! Drawing Lab is doing really well on Amazon.com!! Thank you to all of you who ordered from them and helped that happen!

2. I’m in the middle of drawing the last of the elephant drawings right now, to go with the books I’m sending out directly—thank you also to those who ordered them from me! (Everything should be sent out by tomorrow….)

3. Dawn Sokol wrote a nice book review the other day… thank you, Dawn! (And be sure to look for her new book, available for preorder now: Doodle Diary: Art Journaling for Girls.)

4. My friend Jill Berry (who contributed to Drawing Lab and is busy writing her own book right now) is teaching what looks to be a GREAT workshop in Canada called The Painted Book. It’s July 5-9th and sounds heavenly… five days!!!

5. Finally (for the moment), I was contacted last week by a wonderful yahoo group called Artists of the Round Table (A.R.T.), who are organizing an “in-depth” group study of Drawing Lab! Their study is going to start July 5th as well… go here to sign up for the group if you’d like to play along… I think it’s such a fantastic idea…

Jacqui, the list owner, writes:

In the group, there are many who are on a fixed income, and cannot afford to take
classes and workshops that are offered in their area. Despite that, we encourage
our members that if they truly want to learn, there are many books out there
written by wonderful artists that they can dig deep into. We also advise not
to merely purchase the books, read a few pages and let them sit and collect
dust in their library…….but instead, read them from cover to cover, and follow
through on the assignments in the book.

We will not be “teaching” from your book, what I am advocating is a cover to cover
study of your book. I encourage the members to make workbooks or journals for
taking notes and we upload worksheets with the schedule, check list of materials,
and the projects to do in the book.

Drawing Lab!

Hello!

The books arrived this morning, so any of you who ordered Drawing Lab directly from me will be getting your book and drawing soon (I will send them out by the end of the week)!

AND… I started a flickr group where you can upload drawings and artwork that may have been DL-inspired (directly or indirectly)… I look forward to seeing your work!!

Photo Friday

I had to get out of bed at 1am last night to make this little guy.

Here’s a more straightforward pic…

… his backside…

I’ve been drawing many, many of these little elephants this week (to go with orders of the book)…

… which is where I got the idea. (A good example of how DRAWING can translate into other media!)

At the lake last week near my house, on a rare warm and sunny day here in COLD Seattle…

During a walk downtown Wes insisted I take a photo of this sign.

Speaking of Wes…

Another handmade sign, in case we need a reminder.

“Trog” Painting

In April I hosted “The Art of Silliness,” an online class where I created daily worksheets (3rd-grade style) for participants to print and fill out… the emphasis was on fun drawing exercises, but we also wrote poems, did puzzles and generally had a silly time! We even made up our own language, “Fleep!”

One of the Fleep words created was “troglet,” which many participants defined as “a baby trog.” So then I had people draw their idea of what a trog was, and the “winner” would receive their trog “reinterpreted” by me!

Michelle (age 6) was the winner and she will receive the above painting. Here is her drawing:

Isn’t it just so sweet? It even has a violin in order to communicate…

If you missed the first class, don’t worry… I’m doing a “Silliness II” online class in September/October 2010… details to come soon!

Pikaland Package Giveaway!

One of my favorite blogs to visit is Pikaland: The Illustrated Life. Amy does such a wonderful job of ferreting out and highlighting all kinds of wonderful artists and illustrators!

She also hosts the Pikaland Package Project (truly, a labor of love), and this time I’m a part of it! For details on how to win a package, go here.

Here is my “page” in the zine that you can download free!

Carla Sonheim

Seattle, WA

http://www.carlasonheim.com

How about a brief introduction?

Gosh, this is always so hard! Perhaps a haiku is in order:

Guess I’m an artist
since I spend my time drawing,
painting and fretting.

Who/what inspires you?

Children’s art!!! I also love Outsider Art, contemporary illustration, and the work of Picasso, Klee, and Modigliani.

What message would you like to send out about your work?

I draw animals and people. My characters are mostly happy with their lives, but with brief moments of confusion, perplexity, or grumpiness… hey!!!

I am happiest when I’ve been able to record those brief “clouds of emotion” crossing all of our faces on any given day.

What is your biggest accomplishment to date?

I wrote a book! (It’s due out July 1st: “Drawing Lab for Mixed Media Artists: 52 Creative Exercises to Make Drawing Fun”)

Share a secret with us!

I’m not good at keeping secrets. The only secret I have right now I can’t tell because I’m bound to secrecy!

Back in the Saddle Again

“Now what does she want?”

It’s been ages since I painted on wood! This is gesso, watercolor, pencil and shellac on 1/4″ birch plywood. (The water and fish are painted with shellac, so they’re shinier than the background… wish it showed up better!)

It’s based loosely on “The Fisherman and His Wife,” (Grimms’ Fairy Tales).

When I was young I read this book over and over… I’ve been meaning forever to paint some of the fairy tales… they are both romantic enough and “grim” enough to satisfy the adult me!

Sketchbook Paintings

I think I’ve finally found “my” ideal sketchbook. It’s a 5.5″ x 5.5″ hand•book (manufactured and distributed by Global Art Materials, Inc.). It has a nice cream-colored paper that is good for both ink drawings and gouache paintings!

I am trying to teach myself how to use gouache…

… I painted all these at our kitchen counter last week — my makeshift art studio during an unplanned week “off.”

It takes a long time to get good at something!

… but I like a few of them…

I don’t teach again until August, so I’m trying to take June and July to experiment a bit …

News flash: Apparently the Drawing Lab books I ordered for many of you are due to ship this week, which means I should be able to get them packaged and sent by the end of next week!

Bye for now…

P.S. I’ve listed some of these on etsy!