- Hi, I'm Kath Macaulay with Pocket Sketching, and we're gonna do something that's really fun and very, very personal this time.

This is a piece of stationary, and I've simply illuminated or illustrated the left edge.

And I'm going to give it away as a gift and the person who gets it is going to be incredibly happy.

There's not another one like it in the world.

Come join me, find out how to do this.

(upbeat music) What we're gonna do today is a little bit different.

It's sort of part of journaling, and can be very much part of journaling.

It's greeting cards and postcards and other things of that ilk and one big change in my writing implement.

So come along, join me, it's gonna be fun.

And let's just dive right in.

To begin with, a note that I think you need.

When you want to know whether a paper is going to work with your equipment, take what you plan to draw with, sketch with, what have you, to the art store or wherever you're buying, and pick up whatever you think you want to use.

Now, you're gonna own it, so consider cost, I guess.

I take my Pilot pen.

They always have paintbrushes.

They always have water, so they're prepared for me.

And then I'll pick up a pad of paper, no matter what size it is cause I want to know if it works.

I like to use a water-soluble pen, use it almost always.

And somewhere on that piece of paper this is my classic test.

It's just a little tiny test but it's gonna tell me whether this paper works.

There's a mountain, here's the edge.

There's the edge.

Okay, and this is enough.

And then, and they loan me their brush.

And of course I'm getting out my equipment everything fits in that bag.

And I'm gonna put this over here for right now.

And I need, they give me water.

They have brushes, which they let you use because that's one of the ways they sell brushes.

So they have brushes ready for you but I'll take their brush and their water.

And so far, this is their paper, but it's mine.

The minute I put a mark on it and I find out, does this paper work?

Okay, obviously my water soluble pen works on this paper.

There it is.

That's my test.

That's all there is.

At this point, I know whether it's gonna work.

Now, some papers flat absorb the pen line.

It won't run anywhere, it comes out just exactly like a ballpoint and it's not gonna work.

I do have several of those that I own.

Then I usually take them to workshops and let people try them because they will not work with this pen, but they work with regular water color.

They'll also often say watercolor.

They work with watercolor.

They're perfectly good for what they're good for, but that's my little dinky test.

And I might own two or three pads of paper when I leave the store.

I'll also know brands that I want.

And so, and there are brands that are good for whatever your material is.

Don't, now and then you're gonna have to use a bad piece of paper, like a paper bag.

You know.

something that you normally wouldn't do something nice on, but it's good to know where good paper is, so when you want it, you can get it.

So now what are we gonna be doing today?

We're gonna start with something that's fun, quiet quieting, and gets good results.

If this were a piece of stationary, skip the spiral.

If this were a piece of stationary one of my favorite things to do with people in class is say, "Okay, you're gonna embellish and illustrate a piece of stationary for somebody very special."

And we're gonna do this on greeting cards, stationary, and a postcard.

So what would you put on the border?

I do happen to have flowers on my desk.

So since I've got flowers it's gonna make it very easy to use the flowers.

And how much do you want to do?

This is, let's say it's going to go to my mom.

Oh, by the way, I've done this.

When my mom was in her nineties there was nothing that she needed.

And we visited my sister at Christmas.

My sister lived in San Diego and had an elaborate garden.

And with my mom on Christmas Eve, I went out and picked flowers, brought them in and commenced to illustrate them on stationary.

I'd checked to be sure the stationary would work first before ever doing this.

You don't want to botch cause this is her only Christmas present.

She doesn't know it.

And while she watched, I just said, "You know, I just want to do this because Pat has all these beautiful flowers in the garden.

and I don't, and I just think this would be fun."

And so while she watched, I went through the box of stationary and I also had the envelopes and I went through the envelopes with matching flowers.

I remember who's who on this.

And when I was done, I handed it to her and said, "Merry Christmas."

My mom said, "I can't use those."

And I said, if you don't send me a thank you note on one of those, I'm not ever gonna do this again for you.

So pick the one you like the least and send me some kind of thank you."

So this went on for quite a while towards the end of her life, where I did things like bridge tallies for her bridge club and occasional stationary or a gift for one of her friends.

This doesn't take any time.

Nobody's gonna have one like you do.

Anything to do like this is one of a kind.

So, and then you can leave it like this.

There it is.

It's it's rather pretty.

It goes all around part of the border of the stationary and you add color and you don't have to add much, it's one of a kind.

Each, and if you're gonna do a bunch, you need to have some images for a bunch.

Let me put this over here.

Let's see.

I've got some daisies.

There's a little Daisy.

I mean just how much, how hard is this?

Really?

We'll turn that into a daisy.

There's another one.

Was this difficult?

Absolutely not.

Is it fun?

Yeah.

Is it fast?

Yep.

Is it one of a kind?

You betcha And it can be anything and then you do the envelope to match.

And then when you're ready to hand it to somebody, surely nobody has ever given them handmade stationary before, and it's charming.

And it doesn't have to be good.

It only has to be and be handmade.

You get the idea and then you do the same thing on the envelope where you let's say this, did I do that outside?

Yeah, let's say this is the envelope, on the envelope, you do the same pattern around the edge and above where the return address would go and it's the same image.

So if you've got a bouquet of flowers you've got a bunch of images you can go with, but, one of the ones that I saw that was just I thought really, really cute.

And I'm gonna do it on the next page.

Tear that one off.

These are, they don't take earth shattering brains to be do these, but the person who gets them, they are impressed.

This went to a dog lover.

I'm laughing because it's so silly.

It's dog paws, tracks, and it went all the way down.

And then along the bottom, another one was turtles.

I mean, my goodness, how hard is a turtle with little feet, teddy bears, you could send a note to a grandchild, get the idea.

This is just plain fun.

But let me tell you how important it is.

I had a person who had been in one of my classes.

She was visiting her best friend.

She drew the friend's front porch on just one of our little one of our regular pieces of, you know, our regular pads.

And it wasn't that good a drawing.

She sent me a photograph of it because what happened next was awesome.

Her friend got very fast moving cancer.

And what this woman did was there was room on the bottom and she said, "Your friends," I mean, this is easy.

"Will always," doesn't matter, "Love you."

And what the person did who received it?

She had a blown up great big put over her bed in hospice so that she could spend the rest of her moments alive being aware that her friends would always love her.

It wasn't that great a sketch but to the person who got it, it was enormous.

So don't think of these as you know they're just sort of pooty and they're not that great, no, to the person who gets it, they are great.

Now, where else can you do this?

I've done one, like it's not a big piece of stationary.

Well, there are all kinds of things where you can do this.

This happens to be and you have to find ones that work with your materials.

Not all commercially made postcard stock works.

This is a postcard, I've already addressed it.

And on the postcard side on the address side there's room for another illustration.

But on this side, if you're traveling and you take a batch of these with you, you can illustrate what you're seeing.

And that becomes a postcard.

And I'm gonna tell you the disadvantage in a minute because I've done this, I've done it on a trip.

So we've got lovely little scene back here and a mountain in the background.

And happens to be a watercolor postcard and it happens to be a good water color postcard.

I mean, when I say good, I mean it really takes watercolor beautifully.

Also takes the water-soluble pen very, very nicely.

You know what?

This was a mistake to put that vertical in there.

I'm gonna try to get rid of it because you can get rid of the water-soluble pen.

Can't get rid of a ballpoint or a micron, but you can get rid of this.

Thank goodness.

Yay, from my side, got it, cause that was a mistake.

I didn't mean to do that.

If you go over it, you want to get rid of something, you can go over the line of over over and over when you wet it and it'll disappear.

Okay, some of that, and then maybe some little green bushes, buildings.

Buildings?

I don't have to put buildings.

Oh well, little green bushes.

Then I got room for the buildings too.

That's good.

They're gonna be pretty easy, building, building building good enough.

And it's a beach scene with water.

People ask me, what color do you make sand out of?

From what colors do you make sand?

I find that purple lake is often involved.

Very strange color, but it modifies other colors.

This is more of a watercolorely paper than I'm used to.

And now do I have room in the front just to put something in because it's a postcard and it's going somewhere.

There's a boat.

And I did, I had a really bad botch on the boat.

That's why the dock is here.

It's to hide the boat.

Never be afraid to hide your accidents.

You don't have to throw them out, just plan to hide them.

It's pretty cool when you can do all kinds of things.

Okay, and there's the dock and I have room, Oh, water got to make it look like, and I've got to put the same color in the sky.

Sometimes I forget to do this.

So the same colors in the sky.

And I can say this watercolor paper is working very differently from the paper I'm used to, but Hey it's a postcard.

Do I care?

I'm sending a greeting to somebody telling them where I am.

That's all.

And that's good enough.

Then in the bottom, this is your message side, remember?

We're on the dock in Santa Barbara.

Love you and then your name.

Now that's journaling because you put words on it.

It's a postcard and you tear it out of the it comes in a little book almost all of these come in neat little books.

And here's the other side with an address on it all ready to go and another illustration and you need to put a stamp on it.

That's the problem you have to bring stamps.

The real problem to me is I've done some dynamite illustrations on the backs of postcards and then mail them off and they're gone.

I'll never see them again.

And they were, they were my memories of that trip.

That's why you keep a journal.

That's why you keep a journal.

You send these away, they're gone and these are, this is your most personal illustration.

Your camera is not.

So keeping in mind when you're journaling that your journal is yours, that goes with you.

So if you've put the illustration in a journal instead and these can be incredibly personal, you can get up in the morning and use this as a psychological unload.

And then something comes up and you're just, you know you're just riding along and it's in the morning pages.

And then you've got room over here to perhaps put a clock because you're stuck with time today.

And you don't like it.

That's meaningful.

You're stuck with time then whatever else you want to put this is, this then becomes your working journal.

My husband has been wanting to write his biography forever if he kept it as a journal because you see, you never get to it.

If he kept it as a journal, all the notes would be in here.

And then all he'd have to do is put it together.

I think that would work so much more easily, but you know everybody does what they're gonna do.

Now, I want to show you one more thing today which is kind of fun.

I've been working primarily with a water soluble pen.

And so I've made two sketches.

This is one of the two, this is done with the water soluble pen.

And I'm now gonna add water color to it.

And you're gonna see what happens and it's remember it's water soluble.

So as I add color, make that go farther away too.

It's lighter colored if it's farther away I'm looking to see if I got the right color in the lid and I don't.

So I'm gonna go to the sky.

But the rooftop is here.

Okay, you can see how this works.

Everything's going into solution because of the pen.

The pen goes into solution.

By the way, you can change your mind and change things.

The original, I thought that was a car.

I just changed my mind.

And this that's a person.

So why not put a red shirt on the person?

And they could have a red hat.

Good enough.

That's good enough.

So there's your little scene and it's, it's very, very small.

That's now that's the water-soluble pen.

The other one, I want to show you because it is used a great, great deal especially by people who like to go traveling and it works completely differently.

So take this one off.

You're gonna see it in a minute.

This one I did with a ballpoint.

The common pen is the micron but the ballpoint is also indelible.

Now watch what happens.

It's completely different.

I'll use, I'll try to use the same colors.

Notice the color is purer.

It has not mixed with the ink.

It's far purer.

If I want to get that darker color I'm going to have to make it.

That would probably be some ultra marine blue, might be some brown mixed with it.

Okay, I got it a little darker, but not much, but these lines are not going to go away, they're lines.

If I want to hide those lines I'm going to have to go quite dark to do it.

But there is a huge advantage to this.

A, you've got a ballpoint, undoubtedly.

I don't have to stay in the lines.

Now, watch what happens if I elect to not stay in the lines This will not run.

So what color do I want to make the building?

How about a red building?

Cool, then in that case, red building, cool, but I don't have to that's redder than I thought.

Well, again, it's not mixing with the pen line.

So, it's completely different in the way it works where I sloshed the sky in, by the way that's adequate for a sky.

I can come directly across that steeple and I'm not gonna change it, it's not gonna run.

Now, for many people this is very, very highly desirable.

It's not, it doesn't give you the feel of watercolor, but certainly illustration and you don't have to stay on the lines at all.

So it's a completely different way of working if what you happen to have with you is a ballpoint or the micron is commonly used.

It's a technical pen and it's commonly used, but it won't run.

But I found that a ballpoint does exactly the same thing.

So there's no reason to go to any extra expense.

You already have one for goodness sake.

I need a gray.

Now here I have a gray because it's the pen line here.

Here, I've got to make a gray.

So I've got it in my box.

This will do beautifully.

There's the gray roof.

Yeah, I didn't have to stay in the lines because the lines are staying.

You might actually really, really, really like this.

Here comes another tree.

It's not gonna hurt a thing, not gonna change anything because nothing's gonna run so you can see the difference.

This might be something you really, really really like to work with.

Here, where I had a car quite by accident and I hid it up there by just making the lines run.

I've got a car.

So I've got to figure out what to do to get rid of that.

Well, how about some plants?

There you go.

Plants, I think that'll work.

Again, the color is very, very clean.

The color here mixes color down here stays clean.

It's still very, very attractive.

There, I could get the windows out of the pen line.

Here, I gotta put them on.

So let me find a dark.

I want a good dark I'll use ultra maine blue, burnt sienna.

and I have the dark window, window, window, dark side, that worked nicely.

And I want to darken those trees at the base right over the roof.

And nothing's gonna run.

The plants would be darker at the bottom.

It's cute.

It's fun.

And it's something that you have with you that you might not have thought of using.

And it works.

So I have a little bit of water on this.

I don't know if you remember but what do you do when you've got water and you want to move on?

You put everything away and hold the pad until it's dry.

If you're in a really wet climate, that's tough.

But if it's not so wet, you just hold it.

Oh, here's another thing.

This isn't gonna run.

So if I wanted to, I can't do it until it.

I can't, I bet the ballpoint won't write on this.

I bet it won't.

Oops, it did.

I wanted to get some texture The ballpoint's writing on it.

So there's a little texture on that onion roof.

And then if it, then you can come in with more dark if you want to.

And you have a ballpoint always, everybody does.

I don't like pencil, pencil smears.

If you did this with pencil and then you put it in a pocket or a purse and traveled with it it's a smeared up mess afterwards.

So go with a pen, learn to hide your mistakes or distract from them, make somebody look someplace else.

But I wouldn't.

And also with a pencil, I just, I just don't.

I don't carry a pencil.

I own them.

I don't carry them like everybody.

This is, Oh, you can come back in with this if you wanted to, more pen, more lines, you could do this with the other pen too, but you've got a scene and you saw how fast that was and you don't have to stay in the lines at all because you're not depending on moving those lines.

With this one, I was depending on moving the lines to get the structure.

In this case, you don't have to stay on the lines at all.

The lines are the structure.

They're not gonna mix with the colors.

So you get to see both ways that things work fun, both travel, both are fast.

And I really enjoyed having you be here to see these because I do hope that you will keep a journal and that you will illustrate it because we did that and you will write things and then illustrate it and then have fun doing greeting cards and doing notes to go to people.

I didn't use this.

And this is a gorgeous little piece of stationary.

I think you can see here.

You can see the rim, isn't that gorgeous.

And if you use this for illustration you get some beautiful effects.

And again you simply put things where you want them down the edge and then you give this to somebody as a greeting card.

Thank you so much for coming along with us.

I hope we've added a bit to things that you can do with Pocket Sketching.

And I'm looking forward to you being back again and thanks so much for joining us.

Happy sketching.

Want to learn more about the wonderful world of pocket sketching?

Then visit my website at pocketsketching.com.

We have so much there for you to explore including free tips and training videos the pocket sketching supplies, photo galleries and how to access additional training.

All this and more is available at pocketsketching.com.

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