Tag Archives: vol 022

Food Sketches Week 27

I finished volume 21 and decided I’d continue to sketch the food. To go along with the Sketching Now group run of Sketchbook Design I plan to focus on improving my page designs to make the pages more interesting.

When I took the Sketchbook Design course in January of 2022, I had collected a number of “recipes” for this size sketchbook, specifically with the intent of using for food sketches. These were drawn from Liz’s food diary pages, which was my original inspiration for how I wanted to keep an illustrated food diary.

Everyday Sketching Week 26

These hot summer days are slowing me down significantly! I’m continuing with the food sketches, but not much else. Likely because I’m not really leaving the house for anything but grocery shopping, and I keep forgetting to bring my sketchbook for that. But watching shows gives a good opportunity to try some quick portraits.

This week’s food sketches:

Food Sketches Weeks 22 to 24

The first two weeks of this challenge has proven interesting. It is a big effort to sketch every meal, every day, and I’m definitely learning a lot about not only sketching in faster ways, but in managing time so it fits.

After the first ink and wash sketch took 3 hours for the day, I realized I need a much faster approach to sketching these if I’m going to be able to sustain the project daily. However, I noted in past food sketchbooks, I get a bit bored of it, so this time I thought I’d vary my techniques and tools from day to day, and that might keep things from getting too boring. A couple weeks in I’m already thinking this is a bit too much of a time commitment, but I need to finish the sketchbook at the very least!

The fastest method by far is paint only, shapes only. I do love this style of sketching, and that’s what I’d default to when busy in the past, so I have whole food sketchbooks full of that style. I look forward to continuing, and focusing a bit more on page design to see if I can do interesting things that way, too.

Everyday Sketching Week 23

The start of the Stillman and Birn Beta softcover, 8.5 x 5.5 inch sketchbook. I have used this paper before, but it has been a while. Already I notice it doesn’t have the same problem when it gets extra wet that the Delta had, so I’m glad about that.

I begin my sketchbook with my palette or other tools, and I thought this time I’d document my regular watercolor palette, especially as I’m thinking of a lot of color changes to this. There are a number of colors I’m not using. I put this together as a combination of Jane Blundell’s Ultimate Mixing palette, and the color recommendations for a watercolor course I was enrolled in. I never completed that course, now that I think about it. Hmmm. Nevertheless, this is my palette. The only color I use frequently that is not in this palette is Quin Gold.

The new Gansai Tambi Granulating 2 color set arrived and I had to test these colors immediately! Some really beautiful separation is happening in some of these.

A week went by without any sketching, and to get the mojo flowing again, I reached for the stencils. Using watercolor with the stencils is really fun. They bleed and warp, but the color blends I can achieve, and the abstract feel of them suits the days they are representing.

This week’s full page spreads: