Occasionally I get the urge to keep a sketched daily calendar for a full month. Last spring I did three months in a row in March, April, and May, and that was enough to last me for awhile. I figured I would do another month whenever the mood struck, and eventually I would have a whole year’s worth.
On the first day of 2019, the mood definitely struck, and I decided to dive in and do another month. I was inspired to use a different layout than the other calendars I had done last year. After all, who says a calendar has to have five rows of seven boxes each? I decided to base my layout on an ellipse rather than a rectangle.
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| Unfinished January calendar, 12″ x 9″ American Journey Watercolor Sketchbook with 140 lb. cold pressed paper |
Each day I designed a little box filled with simple sketches and text about what I had done that day, where I went, who came to visit, etc. The process I used for getting the images down on the page enabled me to test various ideas before committing to ink and paper.
Here’s the process …
- Lay a piece of tracing paper over an individual box and tape it in place with painter’s tape.
- Design the images and text on the tracing paper. (Lines are so easy to erase from tracing paper, and you don’t have to worry about messing up the page with lots of erasing.)
- Flip the tracing paper over and retrace the lines on the back side with an HB pencil.
- Position the tracing paper, right side up, in place over the box. Tape in place.
- Rub over the image with your finger or fingernail to transfer the pencil lines to the paper.
- Remove the tracing paper.
- Ink the lines. I used a black Sakura Pigma Micron 01 pen.
- Erase pencil lines with a kneaded or white plastic eraser.
I’m planning to leave the squares/boxes black and white, but I’ll add color to the borders between the boxes and also add an inked border around the outside edge of the page to frame it. I’ll be sure to post when it’s finished.
Would you like to see how I came up with that crazy elliptical layout? Click here.
2 Comments
Love this!
It's fun to see January completed. You had quite a fun-filled month! I like how you varied your lettering. It adds so much interest to your entries.