I went through and looked up all the times I’ve taken, or partially taken, Sketchbook Design. Every class with Liz Steel begins with posting one’s current sketch. A sample of where their style and skills are before beginning the course. I was curious what had I posted before each run, and it always is so interesting to look back and review.
These are from the years 2021, 2023, 2024, and 2025.
This year, it seems I’ve mostly just made pages with weather cards on them, so that is most definitely my “current” style of page!
This is also one of those unfinished pages from my previous entry. Obviously another week passed, so I added yet more date and weather cards. Then I decided it was a good page to finish off by documenting this year’s planner season, and Hobonichi purchasing. Just like that, it’s a page about current life!
I finally scanned my sketchbook again. I hadn’t scanned pages since 27 June! I begin again. I did just post an entry for July, that I’d written the first paragraph in the beginning of July, then never finished. Now I fill in with August. These pages mostly just capture the weather information. Very, very little sketching. But even when there is very little, that says something when you go back and look.
Soft summer skies and a lot of hot days.Sunflower CollageSennelier Neutral Palette, and a selection of Luminance pencils.
I am rather loving that Neutrals palette by Sennelier and I hope to do more with it. Plus, I finally ordered some Luminance pencils. I’ve long resisted because I don’t generally love dry media, and the line is fairly costly. However, I just could not resist these percent tones in the neutrals. So I will now find out if these pencils are worth their hype. So far, they felt lovely to swatch them. And the ink wash over them worked out very nicely.
Sketchbook Design begins in September. That is by far my favorite course with Liz Steel at Sketching Now. I had hoped to get a strong head start and begin in August. I know the course load is hefty, and I’m a completist, so only doing some of it feels so wrong! However, the month has just flown by.
I do have a number of unfinished pages for the second half of August, which conveniently is something the intro week recommends we have, so I’ve scanned those. They are pretty barren, but that’s the intention isn’t it?
Unfinished page dated 14 August 2026Unfinished page with sketched UFO and Derwent Drawing PencilsUFO “sport model” sketch with Sailor Shikiori Suberakashi ink wash
Anyone else following the monthly PURSUE releases on the UAP files? Fascinating stuff! I have watched a few other documentaries on the subject. I used an ink wash for this flying saucer. I am pretty sure this is the Sailor Shikiori Suberakashi ink. It’s a black ink with a greenish undertone, which seemed perfect.
Unfinished sketchbook spread, The Grail Method and various notes. Ink sketch of goblet
I watched a video on You Tube called the Grail Method by Perry Daniels and I was quite inspired by it. It gives me the idea of perhaps a less perfect sketchbook, and including more life things, more notes in the same book, rather than keeping so many subject specific notebooks might be a great idea. This is the page I sketched after watching his trio of videos on the subject.
Ink sketch of notebook with baby dragon
I just have to mention these adorable little baby dragons. I’m trying to learn how to draw these. I had them on my bookshelf in June, and here is another one. I am currently copying these from AI generated art, as I know nothing about illustration techniques. But they add a light-hearted whimsy that seriously brightens my days. I hope to keep drawing many more of these little guys until I can actually draw them myself, instead of copy them. Can’t wait to get this guy painted!
Unfinished sketchbook spread with weather and notes on Write Away methodUnfnished sketchbook page with weather notes for 26-29 August 2026.
And here we are, back to scorching heat and breaking records. These temperatures are usually in early July, not the end of August! I’m hiding in the A/C while I prepare for the Sketchbook Design course. I’m ramping up some spreads, if not too many sketches yet. I am thinking of some abstracts for these empty spreads? More ink washes?
Speaking of ink washes, how about I just share the accumulation of swatches I’ve been testing as well. I don’t have much to say about these.
Ink swatches on handmade watercolor paperInk and colored pencil swatches on handmade watercolor paperInk swatches on handmade watercolor paper tinted Lemon Yellow, with colored pencil swatches
This catches me up and now I get to swing into Sketchbook Design again. I have a tag for previous courses at sketchingnowsketchbookdesign.
Time is moving swiftly this summer, isn’t it? We are in the Dog Days of Summer now. I love that phrase. The Romans and Greeks considered a time of madness and insanity. Here in Phoenix, when the temps are over 110F, people do indeed go a little crazy. Me? I’m just hiding the in the A/C. And buying way, way too many books!
I had written the above paragraph ages ago, and then… the summer happened. So here are the July Pages:
Americana collage for the 250th 4th of July celebration.Collage with Americana and Magical Herbalism images. Weather and Collage for July.Pencils, and Draw Your Day style page.
(Posted on 30 August 2026. Backdated to 28 July 2026.)
So the question comes up, how do I document that I’m buying books, when I buy ebooks, and don’t really have anything to actually sketch? I could sketch the covers. I could sketch the kindle or the kobo. Or I could venture out of the world of observational sketching only, and venture into illustration. Gasp!
Well, if I’m going to venture into illustration, might as well add soot sprites and dragons then! Ha! So here is my illustrated bookshelf. the books are real and purchased, and I really am working on Homestead and Haven. The shelves, the vines, the flowers, the soot sprites, and the baby dragons are just for delight.
Midsummer Bookshelf with baby dragons, June 2026
Done with ink and watercolor wash, using my standard watercolor palette.
I think my favorite is that poor soot sprite trying so hard not to fall off that weather card! He is having a struggle moment, for sure!
If nothing else this month (or two), I finally attempted to draw little aged note cards to give my weather pages a bit more design. Even when I’m not sketching, or doing much of anything else, I like to keep the weather notes and dates in my sketchbook to mark the passage of time. They serve as a record of when the going was more pitted gravel than smooth highway.
Weather diary, May 20–26.
I’m currently working in a new Stillman & Birn 7.5″ square Alpha. Remarkably, this page marks only the fourth spread in volume 30. Thirty!
Recently, my printer stopped working, (too old for modern networks!) which forced me to pivot. I ended up getting a new one, and since I had a junk journal kit on hand, I decided to test print with it. When I didn’t end up sketching anything else to capture the days, I used those pages for collage. I became captivated by that specific shade of aged paper and wondered if my Gansai Tambi paints could match it.
Gofun White 101: A perfect match for the natural shade of the Alpha paper.
Flax Beige 401: Has great potential for an “aged” look, but didn’t quite match these specific printed sheets.
Shifting Plans & Playing with Color
Weather diary, May 27–June 7.
I had plans for sketching, but as the days slipped away, I simply played with watercolor and stencils. I used the Holbein watercolors that I assembled into my Travel Sketching palette (which I talked about in my last post). The dark blue spots were stenciled with watercolor over the color blocked background.
Crafting the Aged Look
Weather diary, June 8–19.
Really diving into how to make these note cards look aged, I used the Holbein palette:
Yellow Ochre: Used for that weathered, historic feel.
Eurasian Jay Rose Grey: The moody background complementary color to make the cards pop.
Jaune Brilliant 1: The yellowed wash on the facing page.
I originally intended to sketch something specific for the summer solstice, but I suspect now that this solid wash of color will remain as my tribute to the day.
Solstice Collaging
Weather diary, June 20–25.
Fortunately, this junk journal page felt incredibly fitting for the solstice, so I collaged it in alongside the Jaune Brilliant 1 note cards.
That opacity gave me some trouble over the text. With opaque paints I should probably paint my background first, or stick to a much more transparent paint!
Even when energy is low, keeping a visual record, an illustrated diary is important to me. I miss it, but at least I’ve captured this era in these small ways.
What do you do with a bag of many different types of markers, all in the same palette? Draw food, of course.
Well, I draw the food anyway. I’d been loving the Sailor Shikiori markers for food sketching — those gorgeous watery effects! But I’d also just finished building the same Travel Sketching palette six ways. Or eight. (What? I got obsessed.)
I knew the palette worked for landscapes and cityscapes. But food? I had to find out.
Food sketches in Shikiori and Goldfaber Aqua Dual Brush Markers, 5–8 May 2026
Shikiori markers for the first few days as I had been doing previously, then the Goldfaber Aqua Dual Brush Markers, then the Albrecht Dürer Watercolor Markers, and finally the Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Brush Pens — my first time ever using those in color.
Ink on Paper — Albrecht Dürer Watercolor Markers, food diary, 9–10 May 2026
Not too bad, actually! The water-based markers end up more similar than different — the palette mostly wins. Except those tomatoes. You have to think about it to realize they’re tomatoes, because the sanguine is just not red enough. Every single person who looked at my sketchbook squinted at them. Sorry, tomatoes. You deserved better.
Food Sketches in Albrect Dürer Watercolor Markers, and Pitt Artist Brush Pens, 9–12 May 2026
In other news — I started indexing all my sketchbook pages. Can you imagine? A searchable index so I can find when I last sketched a particular subject, or when I sampled a paint color and then never used it again. Oh yes.
On Monday evening I walked over to Stonecreek to check on the goslings. They’re at that awkward adolescent phase where their down has turned brown instead of green, but their tail feathers are not yet coming in. I chickened out on drawing them.
The sky, however, was putting on a show. I captured the soft pastels while the geese were eating. But I could tell the color was going to be spectacular so I raced to the other side of the pond, to catch the reflections. This extraordinary fire-red-orange rewarded me. What a stunning sunset! I found out the next day there was a wildfire to the west of town. That might explain the stunning color.
Bloodstone Genuine and Transparent Pyrrol Orange direct watercolor. Sunset at Stonecreek, 4 May 2026
I used Bloodstone Genuine and Transparent Pyrrol Orange. Even the frame is all watercolor. My first “Darks” drawing for May’s Patreon theme by Liz Steel.
It wasn’t a bad month exactly, but it was a rocky one with symptoms flaring, energy unreliable, the kind of month where keeping up with a daily sketchbook practice just wasn’t in the cards. I kept eating dinner. I just wasn’t drawing it.
So yesterday I sat down with my phone, pulled up my photos, and drew twenty-six days of dinners in one go. Two and a half hours with the Shikiori markers, then another fifty minutes going back over everything with water to activate the color. I do love the blooms that activating watercolor markers can generate! Five pages. April 7th through May 3rd, all in one long, slightly meditative catch-up session.
I’ve done dinners-only before, back in 2022, but not since. The logic is the same now as it was then: breakfast and lunch don’t vary enough to sketch, and if something in my diet is causing a flare, it’s almost certainly lurking in dinner. The food diary is part creative practice, part detective work.
Drawing from photos all at once gave the pages a consistency I don’t usually get from in-the-moment sketching. Same hand, same markers, same energy — everything has a kind of visual unity that I actually like. It’s a different flow from the day-by-day record, but it’s still a record.
April 9th has a flying avocado, a fruit cup, and lemon cake, and I’m pleased with how cheerful it came out. April 12th’s glow bowl is one of the better-looking plates in the whole run. The cheesy lemon spaghetti on April 18th was delicious and the sketch knows it.
The DINNERS ONLY box that appears mid-April — I lettered it right there on the page as a label to remind myself I did still eat lunches! It has a slightly resigned, slightly determined energy that I feel captures the month accurately.
And then there’s the quesadilla. It shows up nine times. Nine. Quesadilla with enchilada sauce, quesadilla with salsa, quesadilla solo, quesadilla as a supporting player. It has practically become a character in this sketchbook. My Whoop has been giving me pointed looks about it. I asked about my poor sleep, and the theory offered is that a high fat and high carb dinner combination might be doing my sleep no favors. I did not buy tortillas on my last shopping trip. Let’s test this theory and see what happens. (But what will I eat on high brain fog, low energy days?)
This also concludes the small Delta Sketchbook that is my 29th sketchbook and my 6th food volume.
The featured image up top is from the April 21st spread — Greek bowtie pasta, and a little bowl of Giggles (allergen-friendly candy, think Skittles) with those bright confetti dot colors. It’s one of my favorites from the whole batch. Twenty-six dinners, one sitting, five pages. The record exists. On to May. Without my go to quesadillas!
Beltane comes and you can feel the season changing. I needed a week off. (Burnout persists!) I tried to clear the decks. I ordered a soft peachy floral display with sage colored leaves for the soothing soft vibes. (The order promised peach roses, white Asiatic lilies, peach miniature carnations, and white stock, accented with pitta negra, dusty miller, and a soft green echeveria succulent.)
I printed my Coloring Book of Shadows Beltane images and the start of May as well, and distributed them through the remaining 12 pages (six spreads) of sketchbook volume 28. So close to the end I can taste it! I’m eager! I’m ready to move out of this year plus long series of landscape sketchbooks, testing the various Stillman and Birns papers. It’s been great, and I learned a lot about the papers. I am ready for a bigger page! I left room for sketches and hoped the spread-out collage pieces would create harmony on the pages. (The jury is still out on that.)
Direct watercolor, Beltane bouquet, 1 May 2026
My flowers arrived, and I received vibrant orange and dark green instead. “Flowers may be substituted.” (Tropicana roses, white Asiatic lilies, orange carnations, and white stock with leatherleaf fern and salal, and a dark green echeveria succulent.)
Well, I guess we’re doing Transparent Pyrrol Orange today!
Beltane Flowers. 1 May 2026
These are the flowers I received, so I’ll paint them as they came. I tried to capture the white Asiatic lilies and the white stock flowers. White flowers are hard to paint! The Transparent Pyrrol Orange was the perfect shade for the orange flowers, with no mixing needed. I did not paint it as bright as those Tropicana roses, though. I carried that color palette over to the Beltane collage sticker, as the new color story of the day.
Ink Wash Bags for Declutter, 2 May 2026
Naturally, the weather threatened a crazy heat wave coming, and working in a hot garage is a bad idea, so I pushed to finish the garage declutter while the cooler temperature held one last weekend.
Robert Oster Graphite ink wash sketch, 2 May 2026
I love doing these Robert Oster Graphite inky chromatography garbage bags to document the decluttering. They are so expressive, and that color separation is delicious. Another big day of decluttering, and that settles the garage for the next eight months.
Book Still-life — ink and watercolor. 2 May 2026
The Start Your Sketchbook Journal course by Danny Gregory is exactly what I want to be doing with my sketchbook practice, but I keep putting off the course. Maybe because I’m terrible at taking time off, and when I need a break, I end up decluttering garages, so the self-paced courses get put off so easily? Yeah. That.
Notebooks still life, 2 May 2026
But I sketched the new delivery of composition books and Aries Journal from Coloring Book of Shadows. I even sketched one of the corner designs by hand! I really need to practice illustration-style sketching!
Liz Steel’s Sketching Now Travel Sketching live run, begins later this month and I am jumping back in for my third attempt. I did finish the first run. The second run, I started but let’s just say life had other plans. I have tagged the whole archive of my posts if you want to see the full saga. The official start date is May 13th, but I’m getting a head start on the Introduction lessons.
The “Before” Sketch
The Introduction includes a “current sketch” exercise. Your sketching where you are right now, before the course begins. Since I’ve done this before, I decided to sketch my back yard again. This is the same view I did as my first before sketch. Not only has the yard changed, but so has my sketching.
Naturally, I also had to document the fact that after seven months of delays in the landscaping (It’s been a whole drama!) the yard has finally been weeded. Those prickly lettuce plants had grown over six feet tall. Six feet! They were taller than me. I have photographic evidence. I think they were starting to develop permanent occupation plans. So the timing of this sketch gets to commemorate both that drama and its blissful conclusion on the day I did these. A dramatic before and after set of sketches for the yard.
The before sketch, with weeds, is in the Albrecht Dürer watercolor pencils, The after sketch is GoldFaber Aqua Markers. You can see the difference in the mediums, since I used the same color palette for both sketches. The marker version is noticeably brighter and more saturated; it’s the same scene, same composition, same palette, but a different medium. I really want to see how different mediums behave, and comparing the same color palette is a great way to do that.
Backyard, full of weeds in in Albrecht Dürer watercolor pencils.Back yard, freshly weeded, in GoldFaber Aqua Markers.
The yard features some very photogenic old barrel planters that are in the process of dramatically decomposing. They show up in both sketches as dark, slightly melancholy blobs surrounded by splaying lines. Less moody than the photographs of them!
Back yard sketches, before and after weeding. 30 April 2026.
The Kit
Part of the Introduction is also assembling materials for the travel sketching kit and doing a color/material chart. I wrote about my obsession with testing multiple media in this limited palette.
Travel Sketching Kit, April/May 2026.
Here’s what I’ll be working with for this run:
For line work, I have an Isograph 005 and 0.30, a TWSBI Urban Gray (F nib), a Copic BS, a Pentel Brush Sepia, and a Tombow WB-HB Fudenosuke Hard.
The course calls for graphite, but I’m skipping it since I find graphite too smudgy. I do have the one 3H pencil. For pencil sketches, however, I’m substituting three Derwent Inktense pencils: Charcoal (2100), Neutral (2120), and Sepia Ink (2010). I also have the class palette in Albrecht Dürer watercolor pencils, Derwent Inktense pencils, plus GoldFaber Aqua Dual Markers, Albrecht Dürer Pitt WC Markers, Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Brush pens, and Neocolor II water-soluble crayons.
For watercolor, my palette is: Hansa Yellow Light, Hansa Yellow Medium, Monte Amiata Natural Sienna, Quinacridone Gold, Transparent Pyrrol Orange, Quinacridone Rose, Potter’s Pink, Sap Green, Cobalt Turquoise Light, Cobalt Blue, French Ultramarine, Transparent Red Oxide, Van Dyke Brown, and Shadow Violet. There are also two Caput Mortuum swatches at the side, because I’m currently infatuated with that color.
The Sketchbook
I’ll be starting in my current 6×9 inch Stillman & Birn Alpha, even though I only have a few pages left in it. Shortly I’ll be moving to a 7.5×7.5 inch softcover Alpha. Both are Stillman & Birn, both are the Alpha series, just slightly different proportions. It’ll be interesting to see how the square format feels for travel sketching.
The weeds are gone, the kit is ready, and the barrel planters have been immortalized in watercolor. What more could I need? I’m ready!
Jamie's Sketchbook 