The most sketched subject I did this year in Foundations was my front door, apparently. From foliage against a building, to a door assignment, as something seasonal, and lastly for the line and color exercise, I’ve sketched my door.
a door
As the months have passed, my bougainvillea has grown, encroaching further and further into the walkway in front of my door. It had more flowers, and was predominantly pink, then fewer flowers, and more green, but also more overgrown. Until finally it got cut back to appease the HOA. (I waited as long as I could in order to enjoy the best bloom season!)
Artistically, this door has been sketched and painted with a variety of techniques, each skill building on itself. I even got better and began to include the lamp, which seemed too hard to draw at first.
Color charts, with mosaics worked to the edge. 100 People One Week, and a little bit of Foundations thrown in.
This week was dominated by the very rewarding 100 People One Week challenge. I did a couple Foundations lessons, and a color chart of the new Inktense pencils that arrived.
I’m really starting to enjoy the challenge of building these mosaic displays of the colors I swatch. I’m considering ways in which to do them more organically. I love the quilt block look, but I’d like to try other methods as well.
I did it! I sketched 100 people in one week! I sketched mostly from television, mostly Murdoch Mysteries (costumes are fun to draw!) I used a variety of media and enjoyed the exploration. The first page took me 3 hours to complete, the Pitt Pastel Sanguine page, took 1 hour. The rest fell somewhere in the middle.
100 People One Week — 2025
I did it! I sketched 100 people in one week!
Well — one week spread across a few sessions, with a lot of good television keeping me company. This was my most experimental year yet, and I loved every messy, discovery-filled minute of it.
I sketched mostly from television — mostly Murdoch Mysteries, because the costumes are just so fun to draw — but also The Curse of Oak Island, and a show called Unexplained and Unexplored, which turned out to be surprisingly good drawing material. Lots of interesting faces.
The Materials
This was a mixed media year, and I leaned into that fully. I used more different tools and materials than any previous year, and I learned things along the way.
The anchor of the year was the Derwent Shade and Tone Mixed Media Set — a gorgeous set with a full range of warm and cool tones across Inktense, Graphitint, Tinted Charcoal, and Pastel Shade media. The first page I completed used this set, with the Murdoch Mysteries faces arranged in a light hexagon grid. That page took about three hours. I also did detailed color swatches of the entire set — all twelve colors and media — which became its own little design on the left page.
I also worked with the Derwent Drawing Terracotta 6400 — a rich sanguine drawing pencil — and the Pitt Pastel 1122-138, a sanguine pastel. Both on the same spread, one page each. That spread took one hour. The difference between the two is fascinating — the pencil gives fine detail, the pastel is looser and warmer. Both are entirely in that beautiful terracotta red.
One of my favorite pages featured the Gansai Tambi Granulating Aurora Orange — such a gorgeous paint! I used it for the background wash and the portrait itself. The granulating effect it makes in the skin tones is just beautiful. This is my third self-portrait, and I remain unconvinced it looks much like me, but I love the page.
For the Oak Island pages I switched to the Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Fineliner in Dark Sepia 175 — a lovely warm brown line that suits those weathered, cap-wearing Oak Island faces perfectly. This spread is packed — faces, notes, measurements, show details. It has a wonderful chaotic energy.
I found a new favorite paint on the Thursday pages — Holbein Sepia watercolor, which I tested in a set of swatches alongside more Unexplained and Unexplored pen drawings on the left and Murdoch Mysteries faces in the Shade and Tone set on the right.
The page featuring faces from Unexplained and Unexplored also has a little painted pencil case and color block done in that Aurora Orange — I was clearly smitten with that paint all week. Look at those colors, the oranges and greens, all from one paint!
The final pages brought everything together — portraits 84 through 100, Murdoch Mysteries again, using the Shade and Tone set with a little blue and green watercolor for accent. I also made a useful discovery: Unipin pens bleed with watercolor, but Rapidograph ink does not. Noted for next time!
Best year yet! And the first time I did all 100 people! I did it! One hundred people. And I already can’t wait to do it again.
Using ink sketches for today’s people. It is certainly faster, but not exactly easier. When you get a line wrong, it really shows! Unless it’s in the hair. Hair gets lots of lines, so a wrong one doesn’t show as much! Ha!
I’ve done 48 sketches so far, in 3 days! I don’t think I got that far last year, but I’d have to look it up. I haven’t scanned that sketchbook yet, either, so I can’t share them now. The first year I tried it, I did gestures, and I only did 47 of them, but there were fun to do!
I’m participating in two challenges this month. One is the annual 100 People One Week challenge hosted by Liz Steel and Marc Taro Holmes. Last year I surprised myself by doing better people sketches than I thought I’d be able to, so I have to do it again!
The second challenge is from Liz Steel’s Patreon Community which is To the Edge. Take your sketches to the edge of the page. I’m intrigued by this one, because I do usually keep a border.
Naturally, I started by swatching paints. I decided to swatch the latest purchase of watercolors I made a couple weeks ago. I took the design element to the pages edges and really like the look of that.
Color blocks to use up left over paint. I was going to sketch a line drawing on the color block, but then I didn’t, and now I’ll just leave as it is. I did paint my cute little penguin. I painted it twice, and I laugh because the wet on wet technique (resulting bleed) to the paint on the head, gives it a more tufted look. Somehow, just that one error, and it looks like I painted an owl! This makes me smile, so I left it.
I color swatched my newest purchase, the Derwent Shades and Tones color palette (it has a combination of inktense paints, tinted charcoal, and more in it.) I wanted to sketch something else with this palette, so what better than the current week’s 100 People One Week challenge? So I set to sketching Murdoch Mysteries, which I was watching. (I also did one self-portrait. I’ll try to do at least one per day.)
Loving these people. This took more time to be so careful, but it was worth it for the first day! I’ll be using speedier techniques and different mediums each day, or each page. We’ll see.
The next day, I put an effort to not only speed up, but test the difference between the two pencils: Derwent Drawing Terracotta, and Faber Castell Pitt Pastel Sanguine. More Murdoch Mysteries portraits (and one self-portrait.) The pastel pencil is chalkier, as expected, but richer in color. To keep these from smudging too badly in the sketchbook when I close it, I use fixative when I’m done drawing.
I started the new sketchbook, volume 19, with a Stillman and Birn Gamma, 8.5 x 5.5 inch, softcover landscape. This book has Ivory pages, but is the same weight and texture as the Alpha paper I usually use. I’m curious to see how the ivory paper goes for me.
This month has a challenge suggested within Liz Steel’s Patreon, to paint using negative shapes. So I tried that with my backyard on a very grey and rainy day. Not sure I got the planters very well, using negative shapes, but they are certainly expressive of the grey day!
I really began to explore a lot of color charts, and palettes, from a variety of media. With the color charts, I am beginning to explore means of using the colors in some sort of painting to see what they can do. The Colors of Inspiration watercolor palette from Daniel Smith. Gansai Tambi paints are quite interesting to work with. I warmed up with a couple people sketches, since the 100 People One Week challenge is coming up the first week of March. I swatched my current set of Inktense pencils, as I’m curious how are they different from watercolor pencils?
I did select colors to match the Travel Sketching Palette of pencils I’ve been using, so I could do a fair test of like colors.
To test them out, I took them out for my walk to Stonecreek and used them where I’ve been using the Albrect Durer pencils. They are a bit softer of a lead, and it easier to go over them after they’ve been activated with water. Once they dry the literature says they are permanent. I rarely go back over work, but it’s good to know. You can get the same vibrancy of color with both, but it perhaps takes less work with the Inktense.
I started my sketchbook volume 19 with a 6×9-inch Stillman and Birn Gamma softcover sketchbook. This is the same paper as the Alpha (150 gsm, Medium grain) but in an ivory color. I thought that I might try each type of paper, starting with the various offerings of Stillman & Birn, using the same size, to really learn how the papers work for me. It’s a nice small size, so I can go through them quickly.
The Ivory paper is nice, it seems softer to me, somehow. I don’t actually notice the difference much, except for portraits. I have to adjust for the yellow when I try to do skin tones.
I’ve been warming up on portraits in preparation for the 100 People One Week challenge the first week in March. So far with the captive subject of Livestream portraits. Not a bad way to document that I had a livestream, as it turns out.
My main subjects are the Foundations exercises, my livestreams, the weekly walk at Stonecreek Golf Course, and a lot of color swatching. (Great for those bad brain days!)
Here are my pages so far, from the Gamma sketchbook:
Using a measured set-up is so helpful in getting placement and proportions and even angles more accurate. I typically forget to do it, so this lesson in my Foundations class was quite helpful.
3 bathroom itemsa door
It really helped me get the foreshortened tube more accurate, as well as the door.
Draw a chair. Seems like such a simple exercise. This is the one that has stalled me out every time I’ve taken this class. It’s been quite the challenge to sort out all the reasons this exercise was my breaking point five times in the past.
I am thrilled that I found myself out (getting out is one of my obstacles to these exercises) and there was this fabulous chair with no one in it, right across from me, screaming to be drawn and telling me this chair is perfect for this lesson. (Which I am once again behind on for a good three weeks. Stalling out again!)
I am determined to complete all lessons for this run of Foundations, however. Even if it is taking a lot of mental work to sort through all the thoughts, blocks, and things!
My volumes guidelines are not too apparent in set up sketch, but I did draw this as a series of boxes. It really did help get the proportions more accurate.
This feels like a breath through! If nothing else, because the sixth time is the charm in completing this!
All Foundations exercises after this will be new. I’ve always gotten stuck right here, and so I’ve never completed the remaining lessons! I’m determined, however. I may be three weeks behind, but with any luck, getting through this particular block it will now get easier? Especially since I rather love this little chair sketch.
Jamie's Sketchbook 