The complete sketchbook. I learned so much in the two years it took me to finish this book. I had multiple sketchbooks going during this time. I was really still struggling to establish the regular practice and habit that I wanted, as well as to build my drawing skills. I’m pretty sure I may always be working on both!
Author Archives: Jamie
Experiments with Food and Color Tests
Food sketches and color tests were a big focus for much of the rest of my very first sketchbook. This is an A5 Leuchtturm Sketchbook, which I was beginning to realize was not very good paper for the wet techniques I prefer. That did not stop me from playing with and finishing the book. Here continues my tour through Sketchbook 1A.
Love this Lasagna sketch!
Here I am testing Monte Amiate Natural Sienna, Geothite, Naples Yellow, and Quincridone Gold.
More tests of Monte Amiate Natural Sienna and Goethite, this time with Buff Titanium, and Van Dyke Brown. I also Tested Transparent Pyrrol Orange versus Pyrrol Orange.
This is the Big Impact palette produced by Expeditionary Art and Uma Kelkar. I was testing out what kind of mixes I could achieve with it, in order to get a feel for it.
My primary palette, as it was when I finished this sketchbook in February.
Buildings Course
In January 2020 I started the Buildings Course by Liz Steel. I love her work, and her classes! She is an inspiration to me! I decided to use this sketchbook, though I had several going at the time, in an effort to finish it off.
Though I did not finish the class, I starting having real breakthroughs in my drawing. I was quite chuffed with this last one!
Lessons in Paper
I believe this was my very first attempt at sketching my house. It may be my only attempt to date, now that I think about it.
After this, my sketchbook efforts get quite sketchy indeed. I wanted to sketch daily, but missed the mark, so I’d leave pages blank. Sometimes I’d fill them in with either notes of what I wanted to sketch, or of quick pencil thumbnails. The next ten or so pages of this sketchbook are quite a hodgepodge of miscellany and incomplete pages. Eventually I simply moved on, and now this is like a time capsule of those very first, very insecure efforts!
Here is when I started to realize that maybe the paper in this book was giving the troubles and not my skills. The bleed through that was happening is what convinced me this paper was not well suited to the watercolor techniques I was most interested in.
My Very First Sketchbook
My very first dedicated sketchbook was definitely a rough thing. I started it in 2018 with an attempt to Draw Your Day, as I was inspired by Samantha Dion’s book by the same title.
My colors were too pale, and it was bleeding through, and I thought I was painting “wrong.” It would take me almost two years to realize it wasn’t me, it was the paper.
Lesson… paper makes a big difference!
Since my intention was a daily sketchbook, and I wasn’t keeping up with that, I left blank pages on the idea that I would “catch-up” later. I still tend to do that. I rarely catch-up! So in April 2019 I decided to just go back in and start sketching in those blank pages.
Looking back I can see how much I was experimenting and learning. I wanted to capture the same things I am still seeking to capture in every day life, with everyday sketching. I was playing a lot with different tools, including watercolor pencils.
I almost didn’t post this since the work is what I would consider terrible, and tragically beginner, and not at all as wonderful as what I see others post. But then, it is far to easy to compare ourselves, and utterly forget that most people are not posting their beginner work, but their work after a decade or more of practice. Many are professionals. It has taken me a long time to realize that I’m not required to produce professional grade art work without any training or any practice, starting from my very first effort. In fact, what a damaging idea, yet so many of us carry it. I certainly do! So here is my beginner work, raw, and rough, and terrible, yet beautiful in its beginnings and in its ability to capture where my journey begins.
Building
Building Assignment from Sketching Now class.
How about a Sketchbook Flip-through?
Sketchbook Flip-Through
Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.
— Oscar Wilde.
Late last year I finished my first sketchbook. Or maybe it is more accurate to say that this was the first sketchbook I finished. As in every single page of it has sketches. I’ve doodled here, and doodled there for years. I started a few sketchbooks in the last couple of years, also. Some for classes, some for projects. Eventually I realized I might have to get a bit more organized about this. I also decided I wanted actual sketchbooks, as in books made of paper made for what I wanted to do. Paper is important!
I started to number my sketchbooks. As it happens Volume 1B is the one that I finished. (Um, where is 1A?)
So I thought I’d make a fun little video flip-through of the very first sketchbook I ever finished. I started this sketchbook when I took Liz Steel’s Sketchnow Now Watercolor course. Most of this book is filled with assignments from that course, as well as her Foundations course, and Watercolor On Location course. I also did a lot of color and paint tests in this book. No organization here!
Welcome to my Sketchbook Blog
Welcome to my new blog!
Hello! My name is Jamie, and here is my sketchbook. Or here is where it will be. About ten years ago, possibly longer, I read Danny Gregory’s book Everyday Matters, and I became obsessed. I quickly read every book I could get my hands on sketching, journal sketching, travel notebooks, and pen, ink, and watercolor.
That’s where it ended. Sort of. I sketched here and there. Every few months I’d brave my fear and intimidation, usually after reading a new book on the subject, and attempt some sketches. Scattered throughout my journals I’d put tiny, wiggly sketches about my day, and I’d keep it up for a few days, or weeks. The inner critic would once again take over, and I’d stop, because clearly I had “no talent” and I “wasn’t good.”
The desire has never left. I keep reading books. Then as Instagram grew I found myself following the accounts of the writers of these books. Always, always, always I wish and dream and hope that I “could draw like that someday.”
The gift of watching people post their art on Instagram, and in blogs is that it taught me that drawing is actually something that needs time and practice to achieve skill at. Yes, I know, how is it possible I didn’t already know that? I didn’t. I thought it was “talent” and I just wasn’t cut out for it.
Only I kept making my little sketches. Particularly of clothes because I sew, and much to my surprise the few I’d share the sketches with thought they were great! Me? No way!
Last year I started a number of online drawing and painting classes. I don’t think I ever finished any of them. However, taking the classes, and what I did do of them really ignited my love of watercolors, along with my realization that what I want to achieve with my drawing really is nothing more than learning a few techniques (like how much water goes along with the paint to get the kind of wash you want) and most of all PRACTICE.
My biggest revelation really is that you just have to put in the work. Not sure why I thought drawing was different than other skills, but I certainly bought into the common myth that it is talent alone, and that like magic, the pen either makes art on the first attempt or it doesn’t. Nope. Not true.
So here I am. My sketchbook is messy, disorganized, and very much about learning and working, practice and trying. I want to finally finish those online classes. I want to actually start painting the things I want to paint and sketch, because I finally understand that I’m never going to be “able to” until I actually do it. Gee, I wish I could draw a landscape like this one, means I’m going to have to draw a lot of practice landscapes that don’t hit the mark I’m aiming for, before I get where I want to go.
The evolution of a sketchbook. Raw, real, and full of terrible sketches and mistakes. Which I now know means I’m learning, growing, and just you watch. One of these days, they will actually be recognizable for what I’m trying to capture!
Capturing my life, recording my doings, and my travels, my loves, and my experiences is what I want most to do in my sketchbook. I’m obsessed with documenting life–from photographs, to bullet journals, to the handwritten pages of fountain pen on paper, I have been documenting my life as long as I can remember. Sketching has always been missing, and here I am to add it in at long last.
Welcome to my sketching journey!
Watercolor 2018
My coursework for Sketching Now Watercolor in 2018. I used two different palettes. I had this palette designed by Marc Taro Holmes, and I also used the class palette recommended by Liz Steel. I learned a lot in this class.
Jamie's Sketchbook 