Final Sketchbook – Katye Brier

I’m artistically impatient, I guess you could say. Being someone who is most comfortable in Illustrator (which is a lot more forgiving than a sheet of paper), I tend to begin a project without ever holding a pencil. I know I need to slow down, and get better at this! But I let my insecurity rule. Every drawing I produce – including most in this sketchbook – looks like a 4th grader produced it. (And I know because I actually live with a 4th grader.) I also always go back to plants, and I feel like I should be sketching something else. But plants give me so much room to mess up, that I can’t resist :(

I included my blind contour drawing in here, because it inspired me to do some digital sketching, (which I have included as well). This was one exercise I was sure I’d fail at, but I really enjoyed it, and have since sketched my sons’ faces as blind contours too. Sketching a blind contour gives me the same feeling of successfully growing a plant from seed – every time something totally oddball, yet completely sensical, results. I guess its pretty predictable that the one drawing technique which captured my attention was the one where imperfection is expected.

Another thing I liked exploring was the use of alternative mark-making materials. From burlap to dried grasses – I even tried using my son’s sneaker. I used all these and more to experiment with mark making, I and I expect I’ll continue to do this. This might be the journalist in me – I really enjoy found materials. Even if it’s a found set of circumstances. For instance, I tried sketching while riding in the car on the highway. Frustrating at first. But then I tried just dragging my pen across the paper, and loved the uncontrollable and beautiful line that resulted. One of my favorite sketches was from a long car trip where I drew the outline of every US state overlapping each other. The result was something reminiscent of a map, with no clear indicator of where one state ended, and another began.

In terms of research and the act of noticing, I have noticed how much more I began, well, noticing since not just the beginning of this course, but starting RISD classes 18 months ago. I like looking at finished design, and working back in my mind where the ideation process started. It has helped me a lot in realizing the importance of mind mapping.

Project 3, Mapmaking of the Senses – Katye Brier

Home

The concept of home is something I have thought a lot about since leaving California, where I spent my first 25 years. I have lived in five states since then, and never been comfortable in any of them. Even though the sensory California – smells, feel of the air, intensity of sunlight – have always felt akin to a familiar face, I always felt a bit of a misfit there. I am in love with California, but maybe I feel like that love is unrequited. I wonder is it’s just me, as none of my “home” states since have brought a sense of belonging. Even now, in New England, I’m waiting for the same sense of familiarity I find in California. I chose the shape of a house, as this search for a home that checks every box is likely to be a lifelong one.

What Grows Here

I have only recently started appreciating local flora. (I think this must mean I’m officially old?) It is my knee-jerk reaction to notice what is growing around me. It makes me smile when I notice something very familiar growing in a place a long way from home. Without fail, every spring when life returns for another season, it’s like the first time experiencing it. It’s like winter induces amnesia, erasing all memory of growth. Noticing what grows around me is like soul food.

The All 50 Club

It is serendipitous that this project was due against a backdrop of what I consider a great achievement. On July 18, my family embarked on a road trip. Part of our motivation was 18 months spent frozen at home due to Covid. Part of it was to show our kids that the country is a collection of wildly diverse people and geography. I think it is so important during this time of division in the US to visit different cities, to attempt empathy and understanding, and ultimately be invested in each other. Staying put breeds a sense that we are entitled to judge – and that the problems of others’ are not our problems. Until this trip, I had visited 47 US states. But I can now proudly say, with MI, ND and WI now accounted for, I have been to all 50 states. We drove over 3,300 miles in 10 days, through gobs of wildfire smoke to finally arrive in Seattle. All of the materials used in this project were collected along the way – travel maps, national park education pamphlets, and clippings of plant life from each stop we made. The shiny part of the sun/moon is actually small flakes of a mineral called mica that I scraped from a rock my son found in South Dakota.

Chasing Light

Photography is my “day job”. I am a journalist at heart, and my strength is telling a story creatively using only a camera and the situation I am tossed into to. My guiding variable is always light. Where is it shining or reflecting off of? Without light, there is no picture. Even without a camera in hand, I am drawn to light’s behavior. I follow it, I try to notice it in ways others’ might not. I can’t help but noticing the slightest bit of contrast in both value and hue. I also think some part of this stems from growing up in two houses – both of which had sweeping views, where I could enjoy abundant and. changing light and weather. Even now, I’m always struggling to get to a high point – even if it’s just being on the top floor of a hotel instead of the bottom one. It was this need to seek out lightness and contrast that led me to alter the color of materials to dark blue, white and orange. The orange is really a nod to the spectacular things that smoke does to the sun and moon (see sketchbook) – wildfire was a big part of growing up in California.

Project Two, The Figure – Katye Brier

So all over the place this week! I get very stressed when it comes to putting pencil and ink to paper, and I feel like my creativity fell victim to that stress. I see the work you are all creating – and well, there is a lot of measuring myself against others' amazing drawings. The first three drawings are my triptych series. I considered something using the elements earth, air, fire and water. I chose to focus on my hair, as it is the most interesting (I think) physical part of me. My hair made me a target of pre-teen bullies in school, but has always been the part of myself I love the most. The two pieces with runner/walker profiles were a first attempt at the project, but I thought I needed to push the comfort zone a bit and try using ink and charcoal.

Gesture Drawings – Katye Brier

Project One (week two) – Katye Brier

I started this week by sitting in the steamy New England heat to mind map a rather broad topic – nature. The natural world is something that I can never wrap my head around. I'm not a religious person, but it the rhythms and behaviors of nature are as close to spiritual as I get. I was never a good student when it came to math and science, yet somehow I devour any non-fiction about physics, the cosmos and earth science.

What my mind map revealed was a world of contradictions, opposites and duality. If one thing could be said about nature, the counterpoint could be just as true. This inspired a number of my pieces this week. I tried to create work that could be turned upside down, and have a new subject or voice.

A sidebar to my fascination with nature is how we humans attempt to explain it – either with religious anecdotes, or by harnessing it in the form of houseplants and kitchen gardens.

I used our exercises with line, combined with one of the line exercise prompts (tape) to unify the pieces loosely. My materials were mainly Bristol board, gouache, and ink. I have peppered in photos of my experience this week using non-traditional materials to make marks.

In order ...

1. a tree and, a tree.

2. grass and grass.

3. Boreal forest reflections. (this drawing is virtually the same upside down)

4. Language tree. Reflects on humans' tendency to assign name and meaning to unexplainable phenomenon

5. Lightning storm. Tree from one orientation, severe weather from the other.

6. Beet sunset. Beet growth in progress from one orientation, sunset from the other.

7. Garden poppies. My depiction of how we humans like to control plantlike of our choosing, and/or often only enjoy it from a disconnected position.

8. Bug map. Inspired by bug burrows inside dead tree bark, which followed my theme of duality – also felt like a topographic map.

Sketchbook Week One – Katye Brier