Craft Week : Drawing crazy patterns on your sheets.

This week's craft night is going to center around drawing. But don't be intimidated. With the wonders of vellum, you can trace over any existing image adding your own artistic touch.

Handmade art is usually a fan favorite under the Christmas tree, if you can capture something that is special to the receiver. Here are just a few ideas of types of subjects to draw.

A person or group of people. This is probably the hardest of the bunch, but can have the strongest impact. This one looks like just graphite (pencil) on sketch paper.


A historic building or place. The good thing about architecture (especially Shaker architecture) is that you can use a ruler for a lot of it! This on is charcoal on vellum.

A city or landmark. I love how sketchy this one is - and how it is an unexpected view - cropped in and off-center rather than the expected straight-on symmetrical view. This looks like ink on paper. I recommend pigma micron pens, they are archival ink and they come in a variety of weights, so you can do heavy line weight (8) to light line weight (.005) to show depth of field. I also recommend using vellum or a nicer paper so that it doesn't yellow over time.

Whimsical/decorative. These are actually gift tags, but the idea can transfer to a framed piece or even a triptic with bringing in different colors. This is a simple ink on heavy paper.

Their house. This would be especially fun for townhouses or for people who live in unique architecture. You could also do a childhood home or some other house that is special to them. This one, again, looks to be just graphite on paper.
Happy crafting!