First of all, allow me to thank Cherie silently for 20 seconds. She generously gave me this correction tape at the beginning of the semester last year, and I treasured every inch of it—so here it is, old, but not obsolete. It happened to be right next to me when I was planning to draw my Sunday sketch, and as it always reminded me of a bird of some kind, I sketched a bird. A sparrow, more precisely, since that is the most common bird around. Due to my limited sketching ability, this bird looks somehow transcendent. I sincerely hope birds as such will not be flying around in the future. Else it’ll be a bit creepy.
Here’s GROUSE. Grouse was not at all easy to create coming from someone who did not know how to draw anything besides a rose and flower. But hey, it’s not too bad is it? So obviously in this photo, i combined a picture of a house with some grass, hence the name Grouse. I actually liked this combophoto less than I liked my previous one, although this time I actually followed the rules of combining two photos rather than superimposing them.
The hardest part about this assignment was thinking of things that I can actually draw being that I am no artist. I could count on my hand about 5 things I can draw and a house being one of the more cohesive ones. Once I got my house drawing underway, it was easy finding what can actually combine with it. To be honest, I am pretty content with my picture and I may not be the best at drawing, but hey… we have GROUSE now!
(This is theoretically not a sketch–I used paint because I thought it works better for creating a sky–I hope it’s not breaking the rule)
My inspiration of this assignment came from the breakfast I had this morning. I tried the neon-looking pickled radish on the plate alone with the rest of my breakfast items and I ABSOLUTELY hated it (I’ve had it for dinner and it was fine). I wanted my “Sunday Sketch” to be related to this slice of pickled-radish because it symbolized a terrible start of my Sunday. My initial thought was to paint an ordinary sky with the radish on top representing the sun, but then I had a better idea: painting a night sky and let the radish represents the moon, which symbolizes nighttime/dinner, instead of the sun, which symbolizes daytime/breakfast. The message I was trying to deliver here is that pickled radish tastes better when being eaten at dinner, but definitely not breakfast.
I had a lot of fun with coming up with this idea and during the process of creating the background. The only thing I am worrying about is that the item I’m trying to incorporate into the drawing being too simple and boring because it is supposed to be the star of the show and harmonizes with the sketch.
My roommate recently got sick. Therefore, when I was hunting down something small enough to fit in an A4 paper to create an illustration, a thermometer popped into my sight. The idea that pulling out the old school thermometer from its case is similar to pulling the sword from its sheath has been in my mind since I was young.
With this idea in my mind, I searched illustrations online, try to mimic its stance on the paper. Finally, I referred to the image below. Unable to find an ideal color pencil to create the blending effect, I tried to use the eyebrow pencil. Playing the make-up on a piece of paper instead of a face is a novel experience. Though the final illusion is not as good as I expected, creating “Sunday Sketches” is still enjoyable, which encourages me to think more creatively about the rather everyday stuff in life.
The process of creating my “Sunday sketch” was not as easy as I originally imagined. I began the process of choosing what I was going to use by going into my room and looking through each of my drawers and objects on my desk. After a few minutes, I found a box of thumbtacks and knew it would work well as a three-dimensional object with paper. I took out one thumbtack and placed it in the sheet of paper at different angles until I thought of an idea. The thumbtack is shaped very similar to a beach umbrella, so I turned the thumbtack into an umbrella. People use these umbrellas at the beach to block out the sun, so I recreated a scene on the beach during a hot summer afternoon. The sun is behind the thumbtack so the person is protected from the sun by the umbrella. In front of the chair is a starfish and a sand bucket placed on top of the sand so people can make sand castles. The man is looking out at the ocean in the distance which is represented by the blue lines. In the ocean there is a sailboat and there are fish swimming.
I enjoyed this sidequest assignment because it forced me to be creative and consider all options around me. Although my drawing turned out to be much larger than I expected, it ended up looking just as good as I pictured. My drawing skills are very weak, so being able to teach myself how to draw a beach chair, a sailboat, and all of the other objects was challenging. However, I am very proud of the final result and the decision I made to use the thumbtack as a beach umbrella above a beach chair.
Although I have seen fireworks many times and have heard the sounds of explosions from my house, I have only gone once to a place where people see fireworks. Fireworks are called as 花火 (pronounced as Hanabi) in Japanese, meaning fire flowers. In this quest, I drew out a group of people standing on a sandy beach, watching fireworks. Instead of drawing fireworks, I placed artificial flowers to show the beauty of fireworks. After taking a photo of the art piece, I understood the reason why Japanese ancestors named fireworks as fire flowers. In real fireworks, viewers, with excitement and hope, wait until the powder to explode. However, the beautiful explosion does not last long; it just disappears in the sky in a few seconds. Flowers prepare many months just to bloom for a month or two. Then, they just become wilted forever. This way of life may have reminded the Japanese of fireworks.
I was sitting in the living room, scrolling through the various “Sunday Sketches” by Christopher Niemann. After the tiny valentine’s party at my brother’s preschool, he came back with plastic hearts and confections galore. Some leftovers were in his tiny hands, and he excitedly gave me a heart-shaped capsule.
Some ideas I came up with was a peach, an apple or some fish, but I went with the most obvious : the butt. The gorilla headphones combo photo by Christopher Niemann actually inspired me of the mammal and I knew that the baboon would have the largest butt to fit this heart capsule. After looking through some reference photos, I settled on this one, because I was not familiar with the anatomy of a baboon.
I then applied some markers and pencil to add color. Truthfully, I wanted to draw the baboon in a more stylized, simplified style with marker, but I decided it would not look good. The marker around the baboon was added for color. I also put a filter on the photo, because I did not like the white, neutral sheen of the paper.
This week let's play a game with drawing! Sort of like last week, when you combined two different photos in order to make a new thing, this week you'll combine an actual physical object with something you draw on a sheet of paper -- it's a game that invites you to see the objects in the world around you in a new, more creative manner.
Christoph Niemann is an illustrator, artist, and author whose work regularly appears in the New York Times, the New Yorker, and elsewhere. He’s got a mixed media series that he calls “Sunday Sketches,” in which he takes some object from his surroundings and creates a sketch on the page around it. Some of the best such works he’s included in his book entitled Sunday Sketching.
Some examples from Niemann’s Tumblr:
headphone gorilla
paperclip beach chair
cat book
ear bud pipe
avocado mitt
toilet paper tank
You can see that each of these pieces is an actual three-dimensional tangible object placed into a drawing on paper to transform that object into something new. Niemann then photographs the resulting sketch to create a two-dimensional artifact.
For your fifth side quest assignment, I want you to create your own Sunday sketch in a similar style.
Take a picture of your sketch and publish it as a post.
Give your post a funny or witty title.
Write a paragraph or two in which you explain the process whereby you came up with the idea for your Sunday sketch and the choices you made in realizing that idea as an actual sketch.
Include a link back to this prompt and tag it “sq5”
