Elk Spirit Circa Milepost 42

Throughout my past I have had many attempts at keeping a sketch journal.
I’m often not very consistent with it. But it isn’t because I don’t enjoy drawing and sketching. Lately it is because I’m drawing all the time for the Rekoj line – drawing on clothing, bags, check book covers, cuff bracelets and pendants! So my drawings rarely make it into my sketchbook these days.
But before Rekoj, my sketchbook would be filled with words and quotes instead of drawings because I was often too excited to make a sketch – I would just jump right into the “real” work. The work that was to be big and finished and whole. My sketchbook would house the catalog of experiences and ideas that brought me to the art of it all.
And it still works that way.

But for quite some time, I’ve tried and tried to integrate actual sketches and drawings in there just for the pleasure of seeing the lines peek out from the words as I flip through the pages.

My last reiteration of an attempt was by marking a series of pages as drawing pages. I couldn’t touch that particular page with words until I had drawn at least something on it first. It worked for a time… until I would get busy and then just skip ahead to write down a snatch of something with the intention of coming back and adding a drawing later but more often than not I would forget – until I was next flipping through the pages and came across I white gaping hole of a blank page.

So over this past weekend I developed a new strategy which coexists with a previously budding and brewing idea for a new series. The elk illustration posted here is what I hope will be the first in a long line of play.
The black line drawings will be taken as scanned jpeg files from my sketchbook. Which I will then import into Photoshop to integrate the backgrounds. Which means that the only “original” of this future line of prints will exist solely for me in sketch.

I have yet to fully understand why I love this idea so much. I never really expected to see myself as a digital artist. I love doing things the "old fashioned" way too much to be exclusively digital.

But this budding and brewing series idea I've had for some time? The realization came in the fact that digital is perfect! For some of it anyways. I'm eager to see where it takes me.

In the meantime, does anyone out there have any suggestions at all on where/how to make good digital prints?