Category Archives: Classes

Travel Sketching

Starting a new Sketching Now class on Travel Sketching. Since I’m not even leaving the house with the weather breaking yet more heat records, I decided that for my “current sketch” I’d sketch a view that is always available. My backyard. I can stay in the air conditioning and sketch whenever I want.

I used watercolor pencils because they are going to be used in class, and I wanted to see how I do with them, before we’ve had any instructions. The idea is to do another sketch of this view after class for a good before and after, and to cement what I do learn. This sketch took me 35 minutes. I did add water to the watercolor pencils after drawing.

Travel Sketching Class Palette

I haven’t used watercolor pencils for travel sketching, so I’m going with the class palette in order to learn the techniques. Using the same watercolor palette I used for the Teacups class. I tend to avoid graphite pencils, so it will be interesting to see how these work out for me. I’m rather intrigued by the graphite aquarelle variety. I do have Neocolor II in a similar palette to the watercolor pencils that I may try out (but are not in this image) because I’m very curious about them.

Watercolor Intro 1

Starting my Watercolor class at Sketching Now with Liz Steel. Thus will be my fifth time taking it! I swear I learn more every single time! Last time I tested the exercises with two different palettes. This time I think I’ll add page design to my efforts. I’m keen to work on shadows and dimension as well. I know from experience I tend to run short on time, so wish me luck!

My 12 color palette for this class. Same as my last round through this course. I think I’m finally settling on some favorite pigments. I do find I like the transparency and granulation best. This 1264 Fabriano watercolor paper (9×12) is new to me. Very textured, and very thirsty, but the results are quite nice. I’m experimenting with a dip pen and a G nib here. Worked better on the watercolor paper than I expected. The ink is Dr Ph Martin Black Star Matte. According to the ink tests I did last week, it is the most brush proof as well as waterproof.

Sketchbook Design January 2023

Here’s the wrap-up of my third run of this course. This class remains, by far, my absolute favorite, and it never fails to inspire and elevate my sketchbook practice.

I appear not to have uploaded the other pages from this run of the class, so maybe I’ll update this page at some point, if I do upload the rest.

Master Palette

For my Master Palette exercise I decided to take “local color” quite literally. I took a walk around my Phoenix, Arizona neighborhood looking at the colors and taking some photographs. (A very short walk, it was 106F/41C!) What IS the color of the tile roofs, the stucco, the cactus, the palo verde, the bougainvillea? I could call the results my Phoenix, Arizona Palette! I really enjoyed doing this. It took some work and a fair amount of trial and error to get the right shades of green, but I really was able to get both the bright greens of the leafy plants, and the muted greens of the cactus.