The Sketchbook Project 2015!

In a little over a month, The Sketchbook Project 2015 tour will be in the Bay Area and I'm ever so excited to once again have a sketchbook on tour. Since some of you will soon be able to view my submission in person, I thought it timely to share my work-in-progress images highlighting the making of my sketchbook. For those of you that follow me on instagram (@ninaevezeininger), you will recognize some of the images, since that is where I share my projects in 'real time'. 

If you are not able to make it out to the Bay Area The Sketchbook Project events, or you don't live in an area they are visiting, you can view my completed sketchbook in its entirety in their digital library. There you can also browse all the other wonderful artists that participate. While it's not the same as seeing the sketchbooks in the flesh, the folks over there do a phenomenal job of scanning the works.

As you know, I simply love words and quotes and I've been wanting to do more hand lettering so my submission for the 2015 tour was a compilation of hand lettered and illustrated quotes. Everything is done in a line drawing style and all black and white. There is some black colored pencil shading for the first quote, which is done over several pages, just to increase the impact of that quote.

The sketchbook opens with a bit of Shakespeare, perhaps his most quoted lines ever: 'To be, or not to be, that is the question', from Hamlet. Might as well start off with a bang, right?
The impact of this quote/question has so many layers to it so the quote itself is done over a few pages and is cut out of the paper.

My process involved sketching everything out first with mechanical pencil, then outlining and filling in with Micron pens, before finally using an eraser over the entire page to remove any pencil remnants.

There are too many nice quotes to have them all memorized so I collect ones that I like on my Pinterest board and I drew inspiration from there for the sketchbook.

The project was fueled by a lot of tea and tea lattes. While I would love to say that I have a home studio, my artistic career is not yet at that point, and even though I have a great little workspace in the apartment, coffee (tea) shops provide less distraction than my 2 cats, laundry, dishes, and all that other stuff that always seems to lead to procrastination when trying to work at home.

Even though I was working right up until a week before the extended deadline, it seemed like, SNAP!, and I was finished and shipping my little book off to Brooklyn. 

I'm thinking this project would be a great jumping off point for a broadside project, who knows...

Until next year, Sketchbook Project!

Illustrated Quotes

As you may, or may not know, I have quite the obsession with quotes (I've collected 'just a few' on my pinterest). This past year, I've worked on taking them from the screen and making them my own. There are many artists out there that work with quotes, one of my favorites being Lisa Congdon, and after looking over that work I decided on the route I would take, a combination of simple illustrations and hand lettering. My skills are less than rudimentary but I'm excited for the possibilities that have opened up for me. I will definitely work on improving my hand lettering skills and I might also progress this into a little book series, or longer-term letterpress project using digitized-photopolymer versions of my illustrations and fonts instead of hand lettering. There are so many opportunities, who knows! 

Here is a small collection of starter projects that I've worked on. Also, there appears to be a bit of an image quality issue with these particular photographs so I've down-scaled the pictures from the size I normally use in the hopes that they will look better on your screen. 

Flora Zine

I have always been drawn to plants and flowers. I am sure there are a million reasons why, from my childhood love of climbing trees to read books among the branches, to my high school education at an agricultural school. 
While wandering through the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers (yet again) I began scheming a new small photo book/zine idea incorporating quotes and writing about plants, flowers, and growing with my photographs. The idea has a long way to go but here I'm doing a bit of exploring.  

I like it better here where I can just sit quietly and smell the flowers. -Ferdinand the Bull

Bloom where you're planted. -Mary Engelbreit

We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses. -Abraham Lincoln

Every flower must grow through dirt. -Laurie Jean Sennott

Normality is a paved road: it's comfortable to walk but no flowers grow on it. -Vincent Van Gogh

A weed is but an unloved flower. -Ella Wheeler Wilcox

There are always flowers for those who want to see them. -Henri Matisse

Flowers and plants are silent presences; they nourish every sense except the ear. -May Sarton

To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow. -Audrey Hepburn