Rainy Day Sketchbooks

This is part four in an on-going series about sketchbooks.

What do you do when it's too rainy outside to sketch outdoors? Or too cold or too dark? Actually, none of those conditions necessarily preclude sketching outdoors. But on those days you really can't get out, say, you're down with a cold, or waiting between appointments, or what-have-you, what can you sketch?

Outdoors is my preferred place to sketch, but - as has already been shown in an earlier post about sketchbooks - there's plenty indoors waiting to be put to work in a sketchbook. Anything and everything can do. The day pack shown at the top of this post was purchased in Northwestern Pennsylvania in 1982 and has seen a lot of outdoor time in one Eastern state and three Western states. I still use it to this day. But on this particular day, I just propped it along the base of the living room wall and made this sketch.

The knife shown above didn't look like that when it was given too me. It had a flimsy wooden handle and "sheath" which were soon broken. I made a new and better shaped handle for it out of durable mahogany. The sheath I made from an old worn out leather jacket. One day I set it on a tabletop and did this sketch.

The various shapes and facets in the brass candlestick shown below held my attention long enough for a sketch:

I was curious about how the shadows and reflections would play out if I took a plain white coffee cup, set it on white paper, and illuminated it from three directions. The next sketch shows the result:

The other sketches in this post were all drawn in graphite pencil, but this empty green pop bottle made a good subject for a study done in colored pencil:

Here's another soft-bodied subject, an old L. L. Bean carrying case for camera equipment:

This cast iron skillet served as a model for me one day:

This exotic wood turning was from Nepal, I think. It was in the home of someone I was visiting in Utah for a few days. During some quiet time in between other places to go and things to do, I sat down and made this sketch: