Moleskine Project Blog

My Moleskine and Library Table

Here's your call, Moleskiners! Get your sketch linked at the nifty blog called MoleskineProject, and while you're doing that I'll be trying to figure out where my Moleskine is!

While I'm at it, you might wish to visit the very cool Sully's Design Studio, which is the blog of Kim Coles of Indiana. Her link is: I'm With Sully. I liked her top 25 movies post for the pure fluff of it - and her fave is a John Wayne movie that my father also favored.

Sketch Box & Bag

Sketch Box & Bag
Graphite in Moleskine
Casey Klahn

There is much on the horizon for me, but little time for posting. Next month I'll celebrate the 1 year anniversary of The Colorist, and will probably take advantage of this event to reflect on art blogging, and on the state of "colorist art" as a contemporary style. Also, I will be posting soon about a gallery opening in Western Washington, and an interview in an online magazine.

Bloggers of Note - Illustration/Drawing/On-Site

Fans of fantasy illustration and art in general will appreciate that James Gurney has a blog. He is the artist of Dinotopia fame.

His posts are outrageous and funny.

Katherine has made me aware of the SketchCrawl, and I am eager to look at good Moleskine and other sketchbookers that post stuff I like.

Those of you who value the Guerrilla Painter products like I do will be happy to see that a blog has sprung up to cover "from life" art.

Starbucks & Moleskine Sketching

Starbucks @ "The Y", Spokane
September 29th, 2007
Graphite in Moleskine
8.25'" x 10"
Casey Klahn

Here is an interior that Americans are familiar with. I look and see a lot I could've done differently. Whats more, I forgot my eraser, and only had the little bitty one that comes on the end of a standard school pencil. My sketching pencil is an all graphite one, which has no wood case. But, that's what sketching is all about. Mistakes yes, but impressions absolutely!

I would make sure that the table standards don't line up, and I would omit the wooden box that hides the computer that is floating in the upper right and blocking the baristas' heads. I would "push" some things, and "pull" others. Anyway - I have to get used to posting these Moleskine sketches, warts and all!

Windbreak & Tractor

Windbreak & Tractor
Graphite in Moleskine
Casey Klahn

I don't often make these sketches that aren't "perfectly" composed or balanced. Even this cropped in area lacks good composition. Sometimes, I get caught up in the details, too.

This scene is outside of my mother-in-law's farm kitchen, and features her little orange Kubota tractor. I liked it because of the repetition of vertical trees, and anyway it's well committed to memory for some future painting. It helps to have some objects to add to a painting once in a while.

Moleskine Pastel Sketching

Above Kimball Junction

8.25'" x 10"
Pastel Sketch in Moleskine Book
August 6th, 2007
Casey Klahn

One can sketch with pastels, and it is very good fun. This image is done on sight, from the back of the WalMart parking lot near Park City, Utah. Probably the most beautiful WalMart parking lot view anywhere. If I remember correctly, you can turn 90 degrees to the right from this scene, and you will be looking at the monumental Olympic Ski Jump, from the 2002 Winter Olympics. Follow the highway to the right, and you are on the Tenth Mountain Division Memorial Highway (Highway 224), which honors the storied unit that my late father served in during WW II.

It helps to have meaning and context, I think, to realist art. Sort of "fills it out," in my opinion.

The sketch itself is something of a mess, which is the best start for many good pastels that will be finished later. As long one gets the composition of lines and masses looking like he wants, and a few color notes established, then he's good to go. And, I'll give myself points for being loose, goose.

Before I leave the story of this drawing, locals to Park City will wonder which body of water I must have seen from the Kimball Junction location. None, of course. I just wanted to establish a unified base of blue-violet in the middle ground here. Artist's prerogative, you know. If I ever finish this one, I'll probably go ahead and stick a lake in there, and change the title of the piece.

Of special interest to me is the materials used for this outing. The pastel sets included the Basic Values Set from Terry Ludwig Pastels, which happens to be way overkill for an on sight day of sketching, in my own opinion. I prefer a smallish set, which I may post about in the future.

The sketch book is the famous "Moleskine" of Ernest Hemingway and Jack Kerouac fame. Those are two literary giants whose footprints I have crossed over this past year during my art travels. They are leather bound, for those who value permanency in their books, and they lay flat.

The Squidoo Lens on this spiffy little leather-bound sketchbook's form of biblophilia is:
Moleskinerie.com