Only two spreads this week, as the temperatures heat up. I’ll take this as a win given the difficulties of the week.
Most of these are Tombow Dual brush markers, swatched. A stencil with watercolor, which is super fun to do. On to the next week.
Trying to catch-up on blank pages in the sketchbook, while still struggling to sketch. So I’ve used some stencils and abstracts to get going again.
Simple color blocks representing the environment and colors around me for those days.
Here I used a stencil with watercolor paint. This works surprisingly well. I would have expected more bleeding and runs under the stencil since I’m using a wet media, but I really like the results. A flower pattern stencil to represent Easter. I faded into a gentler background wash with the idea of writing a text block there, but I didn’t get to it. I used Hansa Yellow Light, Hansa Yellow Medium, Quin Gold, Quin Rose, and Shadow Violet.
A pure abstract using the desert color palette. Daniel Smith’s Earth: Desert to Mountains. With the addition of Serpentine Green, because I live for greens. Add a blue, and I think this palette would be a perfect limited color palette for painting the desert.
Feeling the spring vibes for May, so I took a stencil and inked it black, then painted these loose, free-hand blossoms over it. I used Potter’s Pink, Van Dyke Brown, and Serpentine Green.
The sun was glowing on these bushes, so I had to try to capture that spring green light. Serpentine Green, and Apatite Genuine. I painted the foliage and bushes with a rigger 4 brush. I haven’t used riggers like this before, and I enjoyed it. The cinderblock wall was done with 1/2″ flat brush, trying to get the texture without overwhelming this paint only, direct watercolor sketch.
I still have the blank spaces for the Montezuma’s Well and Montezuma’s Castle to fill, but this week I filled all other blank areas. Here are the full pages:
Struggling to sketch, but I did get this one scene from Montezuma’s Well painted onto that mostly empty page of my sketchbook. Still more to fill.
I did the Seven Lines exercise for Travel sketching, but felt the pages looked too barren in the flow of this particular sketchbook, so I gave those pages some background colors to also help differentiate the multiple sketches per page.
I am improving on doing these slightly textured background washes.
My family vacation was cut short, and between the chaos of getting ready, and the unexpected return, my sketching took a hit.
I do not even have the dates and weather yet for Friday through Sunday! Needless to say, I did not sketch on location anywhere. The struggle is real!
I am hoping I’ll have loads of time and fill in all sorts of sketches and memories from photos. Loads of time seems quite unlikely. So maybe I just do color abstracts that capture the sights and experiences? I could also just leave these pages as is, with the barest of dates and stickers. Turn the page and start clean. I’ll see how this week goes, but I know from experience I can’t let blank pages go too long or I stall out completely. I’ll give myself Monday to see how the week looks, and whether I think I can steal time to fill in sketches, or do those color abstracts.
This week’s sketching. Not much sketching this week, actually, but plenty of color swatching.
I swatched the rest of the supergranulating paints. I have had the big set for a couple years, and never swatched it, so now it is very nice to have that done.
I’m not sure what I think about these supergranulating paints. For the most part, they do granulate beautifully. A lot of them seem a little pale to me, unless I am really painting it pasty thick. There are a handful, however, that I thought were really interesting and lovely. But as ever, to really know a paint, it takes more than a color swatch. I haven’t color mixed, nor have I painted subjects with them.
Color swatching, however, is a great calming activity. Like Jean Haines’ book title, Painting Yourself Calm. Though her technique is all about lots of water and flow, I find color swatching quite soothing, too.
I’ll be on a family vacation this next week or so. I intend to sketch, and I hope to post a bit about it while on vacation, but I don’t know if I’ll have the time, or the means. If not, I’ll certainly post afterwards. I haven’t actually travel sketched much, though I really want to. Travel sketching, and sketching on location, is a big mental block, so let’s see how I do next week!
If nothing else, I know I’ll take a lot of photos, and I can always sketch them later!
The Spring Greens have erupted on the trees and the entire island has lost all yellows and browns from the winter.
I sketched the island at the pond at Stonecreek with Inktense and I painted the goslings at home from a photo as my eyeballs do not zoom as much as a camera lens.(This is likely why the nature journalists like John Muir Laws carry binoculars!)
This sketch let me down. First my Inktense pencil was too bright, so I tried to tone it all down, but then ended up making it muddy. Not the spring green vibe I’m going for! While the photo was taken in a calm moment, most of the time the wind was rippling the pond water, which is what I captured in my sketch.
The Delta Series paper also let me down. To get a lighter shade of blue for the sky and reflection, I used a lot of water and the paper did this weird spotting thing. I had seen it do that in the previous pages, but since I was using supergranulating paint, I thought that was the granulation effect. Inktense does not granulate, so this is definitely the paper. Worse, those spots are showing through to the other side! Ack! I use this much water all the time with the Alpha Series, and Gamma Series papers, and that near bleeding, and changing of texture does not happen. Interesting difference!
I’m going to try watercolor over the top of this sketch to see if I can fix that muddy feeling to restore it back to that Spring Green vibe which is what I wanted to capture.
Well, I added watercolor over the top, and it is a better shade of green for the spring greens, but I can’t say I’d call this a very successful sketch. I do like it better now, at least.
What I love on this page are the goslings I sketched! Cuteness!
I painted the goslings from a photo a couple days later, in ink and watercolor, and I’m super happy with these adorable little guys. They were young and still tiny little fluff balls who had to rest after every few steps. There were actually two families of goslings! One family had five who were slightly bigger than these four. What a treat of a day to see the goslings!
This week I finished Volume 19 of my sketchbook, and started Volume 20. I wrote a bit on these pages in the past few entries.
A lot of color explorations in these pages this week. I did not have much time to sketch, what with the leaking pipes in the kitchen (now repaired!) I find that color charts are great for soothing a stressed out brain!
Sketching ruins, and foreshortening, and an exploration into creating abstracts, which I’ve already written about, was very fun.
I am going to be traveling with family later in April, so I wanted to test the two desert paint palettes I have to see if I should bring them with me. One is the Schmincke Supergranulating Desert set. The other is Daniel Smith’s Earth Desert to Mountain. Then I decided to test the Schmincke Supergranulating Forest set, as I’ll also be among the pine trees. I haven’t decided what I’ll bring, but I certainly am beginning to feel the vibes here!
Since I had out the Supergranulating box, I noticed I hadn’t filled in the swatch card they provided with it, so naturally I had to begin swatching the rest of the colors! So I did another Haze page, and then Shire.
I had some paint left over from the shire tests, so I filled a page with that. I also wanted to put the Alex Boon recommended set of 24 as a reference in this Delta book. I could also test the different paper, which does seem to be surprisingly different for the pencils over the Alpha/Gamma paper.
I may add text to these pages, or line sketches. Though I may not have the time, in which case, I’ll just opt to move on and leave the pages as is, capturing the busy-ness in slightly unfinished pages.
My second run through Liz Steel’s Travel Sketching course and I’m excited about it. I learned so much the first time! This year I’ll be traveling one of the weeks of the course, so I hope to use the skills I learned last time, refresh the skills this time, and hopefully get some real travel sketching done on location!
Here are my materials for the class. I’m using the same palette of watercolor pencils as she recommends. I’ve been using this palette since the first run of the class, and they are excellent. I am adding the same palette in Inktense pencils, and in Neocolor II so I can learn the differences in the media, while keeping my familiarity with the colors.
I’m using my standard watercolor palette that I’ve been using for a few years now. While I want to make a few changes to this, I won’t before my trip, or before class, so I can use what I know. I’ll be using the recommended A5 book size, with a Stillman and Birn 8.5 x 5.5 inch softcover Delta Series. The paper is ivory colored, cold press surface, and 270 gsm.
Another color chart with the Travel Sketching Palette, this time on the Delta Series paper. Very interesting, and different results over the Alpha or Gamma Series papers. I’m surprised. The page did not curl when wet with paint. It developed this very interesting granulating effect. I thought the paper was disintigrating, at first, but then I realized it’s just taking on that texture when painted. It seemed my paints appeared less pigments, but the colored pencils appeared more pigmented. All three types of dry media look more vivid on this paper, it seems.
I continue to be surprised by the Neocolor II. They are so smooth and easy to work with. I have only done one sketch with them, so I look forward to learning more. They activate with water beautifully, too, as seen above.
I’m tempted to pull out this same palette of colors in the Gansai Tambi, too. That could be good fun. The same palette, many media.
Wow! I did it! I completed every single exercise. I learned a lot about why I have not been successful in the past, and it’s mostly to do with life interference, and health issues.
Here is the whole collection of exercises and I am so grateful for all I’ve learned and how much my drawing has leveled up. I’m not sure I can put what I’ve learned into three takeaways that relate to the lessons themselves, as much as to what pushing through to complete these assignments taught me. My skills certainly improved, but having taken the class five times before, I can’t say the words were new. Applying it massively helped. Pencil miles helped, as John Muir Laws calls it.
Many of my sketches still don’t have the look I really want to achieve, but I finally do understand that is about skill and practice. I need to learn and continue to improve things like depth, and dimension in my drawings. I also realize those are lifelong pursuits, not a once and one sort of learning. The learning spiral, as Liz Steel describes it in her class. I’m really proud of some of these sketches, as they definitely represent a level up of my skills. Particularly the chair, Stonehenge, and the sink.
On to the next. Travel Sketching is running as a live class in April. I will be traveling the first week of it, so I’m going to try to get those lessons done ahead of time. I will also try to apply the techniques to my travel sketches while on an actual vacation! I tend to not due to anxiety, but we shall see. I begin to realize that lots of practice in advance might be the secret to having the skills to overcome the on location challenges.
I may also do Edges as an independent study. I’ve never done that course, and I think it comes next in terms of building skill. I haven’t decided yet. If not now, I’ll certainly join it when Liz next runs it.
Jamie's Sketchbook 