It’s summer!!

Adriana Burgos, sketchbook study of trees, Hannah Park, sanguine and graphite on paper

Adriana Burgos, sketchbook study of trees, Hannah Park, pen on paper

Adriana Burgos, sketchbook study of trees, Hannah Park, black and sepia pen on paper

It’s summer and now that school ended, it’s time to reflect, re-charge, spend time with the family and get busy in the studio. To kickstart the season, I went camping to the beach in North Florida with my husband and two boys. We enjoyed a nine-day getaway, which was a great way to wind down from a busy and rewarding school year.

On this trip, we visited Hannah Park for the first time and really enjoyed the beach and the bike trails as well as the lush wooded campground. As usual, I packed up my favorite drawing supplies and sketchbook and worked on some nature studies of the vegetation and trees around our site.

In a couple of these drawings I set out to explore warm and cool temperature relationships by using the brown and the black or gray.

Adriana Burgos, sketchbook study of trees, Hannah Park, black and sepia pen on paper

Adriana Burgos, sketchbook study of trees, Hannah Park, sanguine and graphite on paper

I enjoy working with different media. Pen pushes me to explore value and mark-making through line, while sanguine and graphite offer more flexibility. The latter allowed me to mass, using the side of the drawing tool while also layering some line work and taking away with the eraser. Pen is less forgiving and forces me to make decisions through the additive approach of mark-making.

In both pen drawings, I set out to create emphasis in the compositions by developing some areas further and gradually easing to a contour line drawing.

I have found that when working with this medium, I enjoy emphasizing negative spaces to bring out the positive, something I admire in Corot’s landscapes which inspire me greatly when it comes to plein-aire work.

These nature studies take up quite a bit of my sketchbook work and I find it interesting because I don’t consider myself a landscape artist. The main motivation for these sketches is my love of nature and the act of drawing from direct observation. The process of recording what I am seeing allows me to really experience a particular place and I find it meditative.

Limited palette drawings

I don’t consider myself a landscape artist but when I go on camping trips with my family I love taking time out to draw nature from direct observation. These two studies are journal entries from my camping sketchbooks. The first  is a watercolor sketch of the woods in Stone Mountain. I did this while sitting at our campsite looking out to other campers among the woods. I used my travel watercolor kit and chose to work with a limited palette of earth tones. Limited palettes in color drawings keep the composition unified and can be a fun challenge for the artist, since it requires a simplification of the observed space on many levels, shape, form and color. This was done during the fall, so there was a red brown and orange dominance in the space as the leaves were turning.

Adriana Burgos, Sketchbook entry , Stone Mountain Campground, Nov 2008

Adriana Burgos, Sketchbook entry, June 2015

The second image is a mixed media drawing done at Driftwood beach in Jekyll Island this summer. I chose to use copic markers (which can resemble water color at times), graphite and multiliner copic markers. The great thing about using markers is that they are immediate and easy to use on the go, no need for water containers and brushes or palettes. They are great for color studies and their transparent quality allows for subtle value and color effects. It is important however to consider the paper you are using. In this case I worked directly on my multimedia sketchbook instead of working on the marker paper. The porous quality of my sketchbook causes the markers to bleed through. I don’t mind it much since the sketchbooks are very personal in my case. Once again I explored a limited palette, in this case, focusing on warm against cool temperatures, which is a fun way of using minimal color in a drawing. I enjoyed the balance between large value and color blocks and fine linear buildup with graphite and multiliner pens.

Sketches from nature

I grew up in Costa Rica, a country with great biodiversity. My father was an agronomist and as a child I lived in a research center in a beautiful tropical valley. I spent a lot of time outside  and have always been quite the environmentalist.

It should come as no surprise that as an adult I enjoy camping and love sketching from nature when I have a chance. Drawing from nature on site is a perfect way to connect with a specific place.

Georgia’s natural resources are inspiring as well. Here are a couple of my sketches from a recent trip to Magnolia Springs State Park (one of our favorite spots to camp in). These were done with sepia copic liner.

Sketchbook drawing, Adriana Burgos, April 2014

Adriana Burgos, sketchbook page, Magnolia Springs April 2014