Happy New Year! I hope your holidays were enjoyable and 2023 is off to a great start for you.
My Santa Barbara travel journal project had to be put on hold for the holidays, but I’m back to working on it and I have a couple of completed pages to share today.
It was Halloween when we finally made our way up the coast from the San Diego area to Santa Barbara. For this journaling page about our travel day, I created a border out of images from a book by the architect, Jeff Shelton, whose unique and very recognizable work can be seen all over downtown Santa Barbara. (We had a chance to meet Jeff during my workshop, so I wanted to include references to him and his work in my travel journal.)
These images are copies of some of the hand-painted decorative panels done by a variety of artists which cover the exterior walls of a house Shelton designed and called “Veracruz”.
Isn’t that cool? The fact that this place was approved by the zoning board in Santa Barbara is a miracle!
For my border, I used images from Jeff Shelton’s latest book, The Fig District, which details eight architectural projects of his that have all been built within walking distance of each other in downtown Santa Barbara. Jeff graciously gave me permission to incorporate artwork from his book into the page borders of my Santa Barbara sketchbook.
I scanned the images from the book then designed the border layout using Microsoft Publisher, making it the exact size it needed to be for my journaling page. It was printed on matte photo paper using my inkjet printer, then the center area was cut out, so I could do my journaling on the sketchbook page, rather than on the photo paper.
It was a great way to create a bright, colorful border that’s a reminder of one of the buildings we studied on the tour. And I didn’t have to draw all those crazy fish!
The next page of my journal features a cute scene from Santa Barbara Harbor.
I couldn’t resist drawing the adorable bright yellow children’s party boat that caught my eye as we had lunch at a waterfront restaurant.
I found a picture online that showed the same boat out on the water with a birthday in progress, so I included some of the kids and a few adults in my sketch.
The nautical flags that fluttered overhead at the restaurant where we had lunch made a nice addition to the page.
I chose a font called Halo Domas Regular for the title lettering. (You can download it here.) I think it adds to the fun, festive feeling of the page.
I like how this spread turned out. It’s so bright and happy-looking. I started out just wanting to sketch the boat, but by taking a few minutes to think about what the possibilities were for this page, I was able to create something with more style and interest.
The nautical theme steered me in the right direction and helped me to decide how to lay out the page and what to include in addition to Lil’ Toot. The compass rose border, fluttering flags, and sea creatures all add richness to the sketch.
So next time you sit down to sketch, think about adding a little something extra to the page. Some cool lettering or a fun border can often turn a good sketch into something even better.
10 Comments
Gorgeous!!! Love the border of Jeff Shelton’s images! What a great idea – you are always finding such great borders.
Marlene
A lot of his tile designs are simple enough to draw for borders. I’m planning on including more of them in this journal. I’ll use the tracing paper transfer technique to draw multiple images on the page.
Love it! You are so creative with your page layouts. And yes, it’s a miracle that the Santa Barbara town planning council approved such a building front, as they are over the top strict down there!
Peri
Maybe they have realized that Jeff Shelton’s work brings in lots of tourists? 🙂
This is a very lovely and creative sketch. I particularly like the lettering and the idea of the border. Thanks for sharing !
Thanks, Jeanne!
I love your painting style! I’d love to do your Croatia class but just the flights would be too much for me with customs, etc. Do you offer any journaling workshops in Florida? Or Eastern US? Or even PA? I’d be really interested!
Thanks
Hi Mary – I’ll be teaching two journaling workshops in Sarasota next month, but both are already full. You could get on the waiting list, in case someone can’t make it. Click on the Workshops tab above to find information on the classes. I will have a 5-day workshop in Boone, NC, in 2024, but that’s about it. I’m actually cutting back on teaching to spend more time with my family. But I’ll still be sharing plenty of good stuff here on my website.
I would be interested in the Boone workshop in 2024! I live in NC!
The tentative dates are April 22-26, 2024, but it won’t be officially announced until the end of this year. Sign up for Cheap Joe’s Art Stuff’s email list to get alerts about their workshops. And, of course, I’ll be doing announcements in my email newsletter, too. You can sign up for it here: https://lesliefehling.us11.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=5fd6278fe24763a1698b4d836&id=b12a3b83be