We are on a journey through another one of my small artist sketchbooks. As with all my books of this type, I take a sketchbook and fill it with whatever I feel like doing at the time. No planning, just enjoyment.
This book was done between August 2020 and February 2022, more or less (I date each page as I do it).
I don’t go through the book page by page in order, though in general the earlier images are at the front and the later ones following – but sometimes I skip pages and come back later, or do some other thing. No reason, that is just how I do it.
Let’s take a look.
Here’s today’s page spread. Portraits of two imaginary people.
Here are individual views of the pages.
Claudia McGill and Her Art World 
These faces are very different from others you have made, more portrait like.
They were from real people. Maybe that is it.
The second one has a very jazzy feel to it. I can see it as the cover for an album. (K)
Thank you. I like that idea and now it’s got me wondering what music would go with this portrait, and then with some others I have around.
I hear saxophones.
I love the sound of the sax. I wanted to play clarinet in school (and therefore could have switched to saxophone) but my parents said it would make my teeth stick out even more so …I played the flute. I wish it had been the drums.
I played clarinet because my older brother did first and we had one. By then my brother had switched to saxophone. I quit band in high school because you had to choose art or band. So much of our educational system makes no sense…
We had no art classes so it never came up, but I never would have chosen art then anyway since I didn’t have any exposure to it other than the usual grade school stuff and I didn’t know I could do anything, since I never had a chance to try. Music was important to my mother, though, and that is why I learned piano and then the band in school. I am glad for this, I enjoyed it and we had a lot of fun.
My daughters didn’t have to choose and continued the music (not the art though) into college–marching band (older one) and chorus (younger one). There was definitely a camaraderie involved. But also, as my younger one remarked to me in high school, “there is always one class period a day when I can just relax and sing”.
That is how I felt about being in the band.
Aha!
Really nice pieces, your style is evolving. These are amazing and possibly some of your best work.
Thank you. Wow, that is really great of you to say that. I did these from photos of real people. I have been drawing actual scenes for a couple of years but not much with people. I think my skills, both with the pen and observational, are improving. Plus I think it’s a lot of fun. I didn’t draw when I was growing up or even try until pretty recently. I’m enjoying it.
I love these art pieces! I am a young artist and love to draw. Did you use watercolor for them?
Hi, and thank you!. Here’s what I used. For the first one, I swished the whole page with India ink (waterproof version). I drew the person in with white ink, and the bits of color were from colored pencils. In the second one, I drew the person with India ink using a bamboo brush, added color with acrylic inks, I guess with the same kind of brush, and then put colored pencil on top of it. So you can see I like to use a lot of different materials.
That’s really cool!
I know I’ve said it before but – while your paintings are all so very varied – they have that distinct stamp of “Claudia McGill”. (And it’s wonderful.)
Thank you. That means a lot to me that you see that in my work across the array of images.