Get Ready for Holidays in Ink (plus other media) 2022-23!

 

It's almost that time! You're invited to join me and a bunch of my friends for this fun, educational, and motivational, annual adventure. We'll combine inks with other media to complete a sketchbook during the holiday season. This post outlines what you need to know in order to play along.

DATES:

Monday, November 21, 2022 - Friday, January 6, 2023

GOAL:

Based on how quiet or hectic your personal holiday season is, select or make a sketchbook that you will easily be able to fill during those dates. When November 21 arrives, start your book. Use some ink. Incorporate other media if you wish. That's it!

SUGGESTIONS:

THE SKETCHBOOK

You do not have to complete a page a day, nor even a sketch every day. Well, of course you could. But I will not be doing that. Personally, I've opted to complete 36, two-page spreads during the 47 days of Holidays in Ink. I found a fabric with ravens in moonlight that I loved, turned it into bookcloth, and made my sketchbook a couple of weeks ago. 

Holidays in Ink Week 3

 

The Holidays in Ink Challenge certainly got me out of my comfort zone this week. I had some new art adventures, discovered more about what inspires me, and had some flops and successes. Leave me a comment and let me know how it's going for you too! If you've posted your sketches somewhere, feel free to leave a link there too. If you haven't started this challenge yet, but would like to, you can read all about it and get the prompt lists (which are totally optional) at this link.

Day 7 involved a Process Prompt I knew I would put off forever if I could: Blind Contour drawing! But I was determined to tackle it. I had beautiful, fresh flowers to inspire me for the Flowers subject prompt, so that helped ease the pain. I did the sketch with a red Bic Cristal Xtra-Bold 1.6mm ballpoint pen (Amazon Affiliate Link), and then splashed some watercolor over it with a loose approach. (Image below.) Starting with the pen in the upper left hand corner and working across the page helped me guess where I was. I also tried to keep my hand still and work around a center point of the flower, then shift my hand over for the next bloom. I confess, I did peek just a few times to be sure I was filling the page! I don't think I've done blind contours since a figure drawing class 20 years ago, and it was more fun than I thought it would be. The inaccuracies gave me some interesting and unexpected shapes to work with. I like the red lines poking through the watercolor. These Bic Cristal pens are great for sketching, with their very wide ballpoints yielding lots of variation when wanted, and intense colors. At under $5 for a set of 24, the price is hard to beat for some favorite art tools during this challenge!

Holidays in Ink, Anyone?

 

Here in the northeastern United States, October is the month when we plein air painters flock outside to capture the very short burst of peak color in the landscape. It's a time I look forward to all year. Not only is it the best color we will get, but it's the last opportunity before colder temperatures drive us indoors. I've always lamented the fact that Inktober happens in October. I love working in ink, but it's the last thing I want to do in October. Every winter, I come up with a personal, motivational studio art project to expand my own horizons, and try to make the most of the days indoors. This year, from Thanksgiving until after New Year's Day, I'm going to do Holidays in Ink. You're all invited to join me if you'd like an interesting art challenge around the holidays.  Here are the basic details:

Gouache Along the Appalachian Trail

Sometimes you just have to let go.

Sketching from the Window

Today I did a monochrome tree sketch in acrylic, using the 14x22" spread provided by my Stillman & Birn 11x14" Alpha sketchbook. While I feel I could have worked on this much longer, I met my goals with it and also ran out of time. Sometimes I need to remind myself that I don't have to treat a sketch as if it's a finished painting! I have so many "sketches" in my books that I later wished I'd done on canvas or a piece of paper not bound into a book.

I use the Golden Heavy Body Neutral Gray acrylics when I do these. I keep them in a plastic container that has a waterproof seal. They last for years this way. I just add more paint as I run low. Having the values premixed means I don't need a palette, and I also don't need to spend time mixing.  I can just dip in and paint. The heavy bodied paints dry so fast that I can close the sketchbook pretty soon after I finish. The book is clipped to an 18x24" board, so it stays open easily. I rest the top on the window sill and the bottom on my lap as I paint. It's a very comfortable way to work if you have a really deep window ledge!

I don't do any pencil drawing when I work this way. I sketch in a few lines with light, diluted paint --- just enough to know where my basic forms will lie. Then I start blocking in the large shapes, initially working back to front, and then back and forth pushing layers and adding details as needed. I'll likely do some journaling on the left side of the page that I left blank. The S&B Alpha paper is so strong that there is no problem with painting acrylics on both sides of a page.

Palette Perceptions

I'm continuing with some palette ideas I started last winter and spring. You can see a couple more of them in this post from May. I'm interested in exploring how our perception of a scene changes with a warm or a cool palette, and the way a limited color range serves to harmonize a painting. This study was done 11x17" across a two page spread in a 8.5x11" Stillman and Birn Epsilon Hardbound sketchbook. I know it's not designed for wet media, but it works great. Their books will open completely flat if you break them in before you start using them, which makes it ideal for working across the spread. I used the new Golden High Flow acrylics, and just a bit of water instead of medium. I'm trying to arrange a setup that's easy to work with in the field at the same time, and hope to test drive that out on location tomorrow. I used six colors for this one. I'm very close to being happy with the selections, but I'm going to make a couple of palette changes today and try again.

Birthday Flowers on Blue Pescia Paper

10x8", Noodlers Luxury Blue ink in  my Pescia light blue journal

A good friend sent me flowers for my birthday during the time I was working my way through this journal. In sticking with my "Kinda Blue" theme, I did a blue-on-blue sketch of some of the flowers, using Noodlers Luxury Blue ink in a Lamy Safari fountain pen. When I was finished, I took a fairly stiff brush to the flowers to brush out some shading color from the lines. This ink is fairly waterproof, but you can get a little color to move on it, which I find useful, especially when working in monochrome. I was continually impressed by how well this printmaking paper handled assorted media. In spite of little sizing, the ink did not bleed nor feather, and painted pages dried flat. Now that I've gotten into monoprinting, I've been doing some prints on it too. Great stuff! I didn't think I'd like blue paper as much as a warmer color, but it surprised me.

Silverpoint in a Sketchbook

One of the things I experimented with in this blue Pescia book was silverpoint. Doesn't silverpoint have to be done on a hard surface with extensive preparation? Not anymore! Golden makes a Silverpoint Ground that I decided to test drive. I taped the edges of the page and gave it a couple of coats of the Silverpoint Ground. My daughter posed for me, and I sketched this in 20 minutes or so, using a silver stylus. I was really surprised by how well this technique worked out in a sketchbook! The page is 8x10", and the silverpoint sketch portion is about 8x6.5".

One of the problems with silverpoint is that there is no going back. You go right in with the silver stylus, and there is no pre-drawing nor erasing. What you put down stays there, mistakes and all. Initially, the drawing looks very light, like this one. However, over time the silver tarnishes. As it darkens and develops a beautiful patina, the contrast of the drawing increases. I wish there were a way to speed it along! One tip I can give you is that although you cannot erase, you can cover mistakes by painting on more Silverpoint Ground, waiting for it to dry, and then drawing over it. Not that I would do that. Ever. (I can't even type that with a straight face.) But in this case, I did not correct anything and it was sketched start to finish in one short sitting. Here is an image of just the sketch:

Here's a little video that's on the Golden website, which explains more about using Silverpoint Ground:

 Try it. You'll like it!

Kinda Blue

The sketch above is Posie, my studio assistant, rendered directly with blue Big Brush Pitt Pens by Faber-Castell on heavy Pescia 100% rag paper in a delicious light blue color. Actual size is10x6". I'd always wanted an anatomical model from which to practice drawing in the winter when I don't have a model around. Posie has filled that role nicely. The full size artist anatomy models are hundreds of dollars, so when I saw five foot Posie in a Costco display around Halloween for $38, I brought her home with me.

In the cold, dark and dismal days of February, I made a separate sketchbook out of the blue Pescia paper to work out my winter frustrations for a couple of weeks, and I titled it Kinda Blue. This is one of my favorite drawing and printmaking papers, but during the course of completing this sketchbook with experimental this-and-that, I learned to love it for many other things too.

The sketchbook is 10x8", opens flat, has 16 pages give or take, and some fold-out three page spreads. It is made using a single sheet of standard 22x30" paper. I love making these books because I get a full little sketchbook out of one sheet, with no waste left over, which always makes me feel like I got a bargain! I generally use bookbinding thread, but in this case I couldn't find my thread and I used dental floss. It worked just fine. I learned how to make these books last year by watching Teesha Moore's outstanding video:

I did a few pages of pen and ink, covered a page with Golden Silverpoint Ground and did a silverpoint sketch of my daughter, made a three page spread of collage, and did a few acrylic paintings in it. I'll get those posted over the next several days, and hope to do a video flip-through too at some point. (I keep saying that but somehow never get through the learning curve to make it happen!)

These little books could never replace my hardbound sketchbooks; they are more like "special project" booklets. They come in handy for traveling when you can't lug a heavy sketchbook, and want a separate memory of a short trip, or if you have a special sketching project in mind that would be less than 16 pages. The book is very versatile, and you can build in various pockets using the fold-out sections if you have things to store from a trip, such as post cards, photographs, tickets, receipts, and notes. I used a couple of small pieces of the Pescia paper to make color notes and test assorted media. Then I made a pocket with the front flap and used it to store them, so I would have them for reference while I worked through the book. Those note cards came in handy to remember what materials and specific colors I used for the sketches.

House Portrait Sketch

About 6x8", across the spread of a Stillman & Birn Epsilon hardbound book

Caran d'Ache Supracolor Soft Ivory Black

This is a first compositional sketch for a house portrait commission. The client wants a painting that varies pretty significantly from the photos I was sent. In these situations, I like to be sure I'm on the same page with the client, so I do some preliminary sketches and color studies to find out if this is the direction the client wants for the piece. It always results in a very happy ending to work this way!

I really love working with these Supracolor Soft pencils for studies like this. I haven't pulled any of them out for quite some time, and I forgot how much fun they are! The S&B Epsilon surface is such a friendly support for pencil work. A wet brush with these pencils unifies the darks, and they wash beautifully. They don't erase well, but for preliminary work, I don't mind some stray lines here and there. For a more finished piece, I'd have made my initial marks in graphite, then switched over to the Supracolor when my lines were secure.

If you're concerned about lightfastness when using colored pencils/watercolor pencils (as I am), you can check out this PDF brochure, which contains lightfastness information for the individual pencils, and select ones from open stock with excellent ratings (***).

Just Doodling

Just Doodling, 8.5x11" (across the spread)

with a 2.4mm Pilot Parallel fountain pen

in a Stillman & Birn Alpha Hardbound book, 5.5x8.5"

Sometimes I really like to draw nothing at all. Drawing nothing is especially fun with a fountain pen, total exhaustion, and the TV on. Mindless mark-making is one of my favorite ways to relax at night when I'm too tired to do anything else! I'm wishing I'd used waterproof ink so that I could go back with red transparent watercolor and color in the boxes for the DOODLING letters. Too late now!

Review of the Hero 86 Fountain Pen and some Vulture Sketches

 

Iroshizuku Yama-Guri ink in a Hero 86 "Fude" nib fountain pen

 

I'd been hearing about these "fude nib" fountain pens for quite some time. The nib is bent upward so that by writing with it at different angles, you can vary the width of the line. I tried to get photos, but my camera just isn't good enough to capture the details on the nib. In searching online for a link so that you could see some images, I came across this review of the same pen, which has excellent photos to accompany it, so you can check it out there.

A friend tipped me off to a seller who had them on Ebay for $5, so I figured for that price I couldn't go wrong. (That seller is now sold out, but they are available through http://isellpens.com .) I did my usual soapy water -- clean water flush and dry, and inked it up the next evening with Iroshizuku Yama-Guri ink, which is a nicely-flowing ink in the brown family. Using the end of the nib, I was able to get an extremely fine, yet still wet line. It was a great pen/ink combination for quick, thin-lined wirey gesture sketches of this vulture. I did them from photos I'd taken that day at the Bronx Zoo, since I didn't have enough time to sketch them on location. In addition to that wonderful fast, juicy, thin line, I was able to then lay the broader area of the tip down to get in my dark shaded areas and accents. In fact, I loved the pen so much that I buzzed through five pages of sketches and then went right to my computer to order the only three that the Ebay seller had left.

The pen is rather heavy, and you may or may not like that "rocket ship" look! It does come with a converter, so it's very easy to fill. I've also been told that the nib for this pen will fit on a standard Noodler's Flex Pen or a TWSBI! Although I do have both of those, I haven't yet tried it. So if you don't like the pen body, there are other options, and it might be worth it for the nib.

If you like to sketch with fountain pens, this is definitely one that you'll want to check out. Sailor also makes these types of fude nib fountain pens at reasonable prices. I've been playing with a couple of the Sailors over the past day or so too. I'm certainly becoming a fan of this type of nib.

Sketches from Tilly Foster Farm

Antique water pump and wooden bucket:
11x8.5", Wolff's Carbon Pencil and wash in a Stillman & Birn Epsilon hardbound sketchbook

I went sketching at Tilly Foster Farm a couple of days ago and stumbled upon a little museum there of antique farm equipment! It was a real gold mine for sketching opportunities! This old warped bucket and water pump caught my eye.

I also did some quick little gesture sketches of the chickens with my Pitt Brush Pens as they scuttled around their pen. Great fun! They sure do move around a lot. Now I know where the term "chicken scratch" came from.

Chicken Scratch with Pitt Brush Pens, 8.5x5.5":

That's Life

Golden Black Gesso

Iridescent and Interference Acrylics

Krylon Gold Leafing Pen

Stillman & Birn 5.5x8.5" hardbound sketchbook

Just doodling, gold on black.

Golden Acrylic Neutral Grays

Golden Heavy Body Acrylic Neutral Grays, plus Black and Titanium White

Stillman and Birn 8.5x11" hardbound Epsilon Sketchbook

Those of you who have been following me for awhile have probably seen my setup for value studies in acrylic. I love doing monochrome studies this way. The Golden Paints Company makes it so easy; there's no color mixing --- just dip right into the value you want. It's been awhile since I did some of these value studies, so I pulled the container off the shelf figuring I'd clean it out, refill it, and put it to use, but the paint in it is still perfectly fine! That seal around the top of my container worked better than I thought it would. The binder and pigment separated a bit while sitting, but I sprayed in a little water, mixed it up again with a tongue depressor, and the set was good to go.

I was thinking of bringing it to open studio life drawing the next day. The longest poses in that session are only 20 minutes. I wasn't sure I could accomplish enough with acrylic paints in that time frame, and also wasn't sure I'd find the heavy body acrylics blendable enough for portraits and figures on paper. In keeping with my desire to brush up on portraiture, I decided to test drive the idea in my Epsilon sketchbook, working off an old black and white photograph of pianist Maria Teresa Carreno. She was a child prodigy who lived from 1853-1917.

As I thought, the paint didn't blend as well as I'd hoped on unprimed paper. Although I'm not necessarily unhappy with it as a study, it would have gone better with a primed surface and some of that delicious Golden AGL (Acrylic Glazing Liquid), which extends the drying time enough to blend a bit. I didn't use the AGL because I was thinking that in a sketchbook, extending the drying time might prove to be a bad idea when you need to turn the page to start the next pose, and I probably wouldn't want to bring my studio hair dryer into the life drawing session.

So, the next day, I brought traditional black and sepia dry drawing media with me to life drawing instead, and I totally bombed! I may as well have brought these after all and given it a go, so that's what I'm going to do next week. Maybe. Unless I change my mind! I think I'll give a few pages a coating of Golden Matte Medium so they won't be quite so absorbent, just in case I go through with this plan. 

Portrait Sketch of George Gershwin with Pitt Big Brush Pens

8.5x11" Stillman & Birn Epsilon hardbound sketchbook
Pitt Big Brush Pens

I've been doing a few portrait sketches from photos in the evenings, and thought I'd combine that with some other color trials of Pitt Big Brush Pens. These pens are so much fun to draw with, especially on this plate surface. They combine the glide of brushes and paint with the tactile feel of drawing. I do find myself missing my fountain pens and inks, but I need to find something more archival if I want to move some of my recent ideas from the sketchbook to something that can be framed and hung on a wall, where it might be exposed to sunlight. Most of these Pitt Brush Pens have great lightfastness ratings, and since they are individually rated, you can actually go online and select colors that have the top rating if that is important to you.

Little Girl in the Greenhouse

 

Click image for a larger, clearer view

Pitt Big Brush Pens

Stillman & Birn Epsilon 5.5x8.5" hardbound sketchbook

This was my last quick sketch of the day at Adams Fairacre Farm. There were so many great statues in the greenhouse that I wished I could have stayed longer, but we all lost two hours of sketching time having an extremely enjoyable lunch in their dining area, while discussing possible future plots of Downton Abbey and admiring each others' sketchbooks! It was time well spent relaxing with fellow friends and artists.

I have to say, I really enjoyed working on the white paper these past couple of sketches! I only have one colored page spread remaining in this book, and several black ones, so I went to the few white pages remaining. It's time for me to start thinking about what journal will come next. I sure would like to work bigger if my back will stand up to me holding a larger book while sketching out in the field.

Pitt Big Brush Pens and Some Quick Figures

This image is clickable if you wish to view an enlargement.

Quick figure sketches from photo references (The Figure in Motion)

Pitt Big Brush Pens: Dark Sepia, Raw Sienna, Light Flesh

Some blending done while wet, using Niji waterbrush

All images in this post were done in my altered book

When my order of Big Brush Pens arrived a few days ago, I did a color chart so I could see the actual colors on this paper. I set out some color groupings that I thought would work well together and provide me with at least three values. In anticipation of attending open studio life drawing the next day, I warmed up with some sketches from photo references --- easier than drawing from life, since the translation of three dimensions to two dimensions is already done for you by the camera! Still, going straight in with ink is always a challenge. I liked the way the colors worked for those sketches above, so I plan to keep that color grouping intact.

So, with at least one group of three markers that I know will work together, and some ideas for others, off we go to a session of short poses! I didn't photograph all the pages because it is such a time consuming process, but here are a few pages worth. These were all 20 minute poses, done from life. I sampled some of my other color groupings. After doing a few sketches, I did one with a more conventional drawing medium too --- a Sepia Cretacolor lead.

 

 Left: Pitt Big Brush Pens in Caput Mortuum, Sanguine, Cinnamon, Light Flesh

Center: Pitt Big Brush Pens in Indanthrene Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Sky Blue

Right: Sepia Cretacolor Lead, blended with a finger (and accidentally smudged by my hand!)

Pitt Big Brush Pens in Dark Sepia, Raw Sienna, and light flesh for the figure. Colors added in Deep Scarlet, Sky Blue, Ultramarine, Light Green for table and stool.

It's a tall order in short poses in life drawing to take on a medium that doesn't move much and can't be erased. But I enjoyed it, and I'm sure these Big Brush Pens will become part of my regular sketching materials for various subjects. I'm not sure if I'll be bringing the brush pens next time, or use something else; I have lots of ideas cooking in my brain. But it's always a fun time, and a great place to experiment with various approaches and mediums.

Pitt Big Brush Pens and Stillman and Birn Epsilon --- a match made in Heaven!

Pitt Warm Grey Big Brush Pens

Stillman & Birn Epsilon 8.5x11" hardbound sketchbook

I have a book of old photographs of great composers. It's in black and white, and every so often I break it open for some monochrome portrait practice while watching TV or listening to music. The other night, I decided to test drive my new Warm Grey Pitt Big Brush Pens on the silky-smooth paper of the Epsilon book. I spent about 45 minutes on this sketch of Italo Montemezzi using the photo reference. I totally fell in love with this combination of materials. I worked directly in ink, so that combined with the waterproof ink limited opportunities to blend values or make corrections. For sketching purposes I often prefer a direct approach with few changes, and I'm looking forward to working more with this combination of materials.

About the paper: The sizing on this paper lets the ink sit up on the surface. That means that it takes longer to dry, and with permanent ink, I think it's a huge benefit. I was able to move the ink around with a waterbrush or smear it with my finger if I did so quickly, so I had some blending capabilities until it set. I need to work with this combination more to learn to take better advantage of that, but I can see that it will be extremely useful. There was no bleed-through of the ink to the other side of the page, in spite of multiple coats of heavy application in some areas, and it is archival. The Epsilon paper is very smooth, allowing for easy detailing, and the brush pens move easily across the surface. I'm thinking that the points on the brush pens will be much better preserved on this type of surface than on a rougher, or even vellum texture. I absolutely loved working this size with the big brush pens. It's much more freeing than working in a smaller book with a finer point. So, I just might have to have two art journals going at the same time after all; I need to think more on this.

About the Pitt Big Brush Pens: Wow! I love these to bits! I've tried the Kuretake brush pens, Pentel brush pens, Aquash brush pens, Noodler's brush pens, and many others. These Pitt Big Brush Pens can cover so much more ground, have firmer tips with better spring, come to a nice sharp point for detail work. They put out enough ink to keep up with my sketching, are waterproof and archival, and available in 58 colors! I have not yet used them in combination with watercolors, but I have tried to budge the dry ink with a waterbrush and scrubbing with my finger to no avail. It's not going anywhere! I bought a lot of them to have working "sets" in various color groups, plus a few bright ones for those times when you need a strong spot of a bright color. I'll be showing some figure sketches tomorrow using a few different color combinations. This portrait was done with the four "Warm Grey" colors. The palette is shown on the page. I guess I could have added black to it also, but the Warm Grey V was so dark that even though I had the black out, I never used it.

Altered Book --- A Little Side Project

Quick boat studies

11x17" across a two page spread in my altered book

Although I prefer to work just in one main art journal at a time, there are sometimes reasons for turning to something else. In this case, I didn't want to burn through a lot of good, expensive paper for quick sketches and experiments. My plan was to use this other book for short poses in life drawing sessions, as well as quick practice sketches of one kind or another that I don't want to put into my art journal. I decided to take an old 8 1/2 x 11" book which still had a good, solid binding, and gesso pages to sketch on. That way it would be very inexpensive, and the gesso would soften the background text or images to increase depth while eliminating the visual distraction or competition with the sketches.The sketch above of the boats was done over one of the maps in the book. I thought it rather appropriate that they were sketched over oceans!

I selected a book with a lot of graphical content, as well as pages of full text. I used Golden Acrylic Gesso, and also tried some pages with Golden Absorbent Ground, as well as a couple with Golden Black Gesso just for fun. I thought the Absorbent Ground might provide a better working surface if I wanted to add any watercolor washes. The sketch above of the boats was done using Pitt Brush Pens on pages coated with the Golden Absorbent Ground. (Just because I liked the idea of doing them on the page spread with the map, and that happened to be prepared that way.)

I tested out my gouache and watercolor palettes to see how the colors would look on the surface of this paper with the Absorbent Ground. Answer: Pretty dull, though in person they have more vibrancy than they do in this digital image. Plus, it wrinkled the paper more than the Golden Acrylic Gesso. Speaking of which, if buckling paper bothers you, an altered book like this is probably not something that would interest you. Even pages coated with gesso did wrinkle. Of course, this paper was designed for printed text, and not for wet media! The gesso does add strength to the paper and gives it some sizing, but at the cost of some wrinkling. I dried each page spread with a hair dryer as I went along, then set it under a very heavy coffee table book overnight to help control some of the wrinkling.

On the left side above, you can see the ink from a sketch on the previous page coming through the paper a bit. That was a blank page, so I didn't coat it with anything on either side. Pages that were sized with either the Golden Acrylic Gesso or the Golden Absorbent Ground did not bleed through, nor show ghosting of images on the reverse side of the pages. (The wrinkling on that left hand page is just from the little bit of watercolor used in that one area of the previous page, and not from applying a sizing.)

Below, the page on the left was sized with the gesso. The page on the right was only sized in one area.  I left the more graphical page text that was printed on the right side. I thought I might use it as inspiration for some doodles, and I just kind of liked it! On several of the pages, I left bits of text, titles, or graphical elements without applying gesso over them.

I took the book to life drawing a couple of weeks ago. It was my first time going to an open studio session this winter, and go figure; the model didn't show! Some people from the group took turns doing three minute poses, and then everybody went home. These were a few of the three minute poses I did to test drive the book. I used a Wolff's 6B carbon pencil with a waterbrush, and added some light washes to a couple of the figures.

From time to time, I'll be showing some of my figure work or sketches done in this book, but for the most part, it's for short poses, quick sketches, doodles, border designs that I'm working out, testing ideas for fonts, and other things where I not only don't want to waste high quality paper, but for the most part, it's not even worth taking the time to photograph, adjust and post the images! However, in the interest of exposing other artists to the potential for using old books, I thought it was worth the post. I had initial pangs of guilt about "destroying" a book. But it wasn't too hard for me to convince myself that a book is not a one-of-a-kind work of art. In this age of reusing, repurposing, recycling, and reducing waste, creating sketchbooks from old books feels like a good thing to do. If you are opposed to using a book this way, consider doing it with a phone book or old catalog!