Sketchbook in a Tin

 

A friend of mine gave me a really cute tin filled with 30 cold press Hannemule watercolor postcards. (https://amzn.to/3cceRSN.) You can see the tin in the image above on the upper right corner. It's been super easy to tuck it into a sketch bag with a small pan set of watercolors or gouache, or a favorite brush pen (https://amzn.to/3mAWTOC) for monochromatic studies. The cards are 4x6" with rounded corners. I'd classify the paper as

Makeup Kit to Painting Set Conversion

About five years ago, my daughter abandoned a makeup kit in the bathroom closet. It opened to reveal slide out trays with metal pans filled with eyeshadow, little screw cap pots for lip gloss, a mirror set into the lid, and even a small mascara tube. I have to confess that I coveted it from the first moment I laid eyes on it, hoping to someday convert it into a painting kit. The last time she came to visit, she gave it to me. Yes, I do wish I'd asked her sooner! 

(If the full post with images does not appear below, please click the post title above.)

Stillman and Birn Nova Trio Sketchbook Review

Immature Bald Eagle, gouache on gray paper of a Stillman & Birn Nova Trio Sketchbook

(Click title if full review does not appear.)

Megasketch Monday -- My Big Regret

Part of my current "Inspiration Wall" in the studio

Project Megasketch has influenced and improved my art and creativity in more ways that I can count. However, if there were a single thing I wish I'd done differently, it would be this: I wish I'd taken the book apart from the very beginning, and used only one side of each page.  That is my big regret.

Initially, I didn't see that a 600 page bound volume would be a problem. As the page numbers grew, the negative aspects of a double-sided, single volume multiplied. I didn't realize the full impact until the project was over.  If you're part way through the project, and working in a stitch-bound book, you may want to consider changing to a loose sheet system. I wish I had for so many reasons.

To arrive at our destination, we need to use what we've learned, see the path we are on, and use that for inspiration in moving ahead.

• What has inspired you on your megasketch journey so far? 
• Which sketches represent what you need to see more of in your work, or a direction you'd like to pursue further? 
• What have you done that could serve as references for a series, or to chase an idea all the way to its conclusion? 
• Which ones teach lessons, alerting you when you've taken a wrong turn?

I use a wall in my studio to answer these questions. It influences the way I work. The image above

Rewetting Gouache -- Tips and Tricks

A couple of my gouache (left) and watercolor (right) palettes with some little sketches.
The small, airtight plastic container has titanium white gouache in it.

Lately, many people are saying online that you cannot or should not rewet gouache after it has dried. But I've been rewetting gouache forever. That's why I love gouache as a travel medium. If you don't mind traveling with tubes of paint, and taking the time on location to set up your gouache palette, then just keep doing what you're doing and ignore this post! Personally, I want the advantages of oil or acrylic if I'm going the wet paint route. Gouache offers me portability and compact simplification when those are a priority, such as when out on location or working in a sketchbook. It does not have the feel of that luscious, smooth, wet paint out of the tube, but it serves my purposes.

(Note: "Acryla Gouache" is acrylic paint, not gouache. It cannot be rewet. This post applies only to gouache, which is opaque watercolor, and remains water soluble even after it has dried.)

If you've been struggling with rewetting your gouache, or the appearance of the rewet gouache on your painting, I have a few tips that may be helpful for you:

Importance of Composition and Color Studies en Plein Air

I don't always do compositional sketches before embarking on a painting. When working out on location, the time to paint is always too short as it is. However, sometimes there are many elements we plan to move around or change. The sketches above are about 4.5x6", done in my Stillman & Birn hardbound sketchbook. The top one is acrylic over a pencil sketch, and the bottom one is watercolor over pencil.

In the top sketch, there was actually no pathway at all going into the field. I felt the scene needed a way to draw the viewer into the composition. I did the sketch in pencil to test drive my ideas. After setting up to paint applying some color over my pencil sketch gave me a chance to try out some color mixes too. When I stepped in to do the actual painting (in acrylic), which was 15x20, I'd resolved many potential problems before I even lifted my brush. This is the finished painting, which will be going up on my Hudson Valley Painter blog soon.

Based on the sketch I'd done, I made further changes when doing the painting. The sketch gave me a chance to consider more options.

The sketch of Croton Gorge Dam was done because the scene was so complex. I wasn't planning to make changes as much as I was trying to wrap my head around what would go where in the confusing mass of shapes, textures and perspective. It took three sketches before I had something I felt I could work with. The first two failures made me extremely grateful that I hadn't just jumped in on my 16x20" painting. Once I did this third sketch of the gorge, waterfall, dam, and bridge, I took out my watercolors and splashed some color on just to get a better idea of what it would look like. I felt I finally had a good working design, and broke out the larger panel for my painting and my acrylics.

This one still needs a few studio tweaks, but I don't think I could have captured this scene effectively if I hadn't taken the time to do the sketches. In this case, the sketches were more complicated and took a lot more time than usual. That proved to me how much I needed to do them, and how far off the mark my painting would have been if I'd neglected that step. It would have ended up as poorly designed as my first sketch of the day (which was so bad that I actually erased it even though it was in my sketchbook!)

The moral of my story to myself is that sometimes it is well worth the time and effort to Sketch Before You Paint. It's the artist's equivalent to Think Before You Speak, and Look Before You Leap!

Kinda Blue

The sketch above is Posie, my studio assistant, rendered directly with blue Big Brush Pitt Pens by Faber-Castell on heavy Pescia 100% rag paper in a delicious light blue color. Actual size is10x6". I'd always wanted an anatomical model from which to practice drawing in the winter when I don't have a model around. Posie has filled that role nicely. The full size artist anatomy models are hundreds of dollars, so when I saw five foot Posie in a Costco display around Halloween for $38, I brought her home with me.

In the cold, dark and dismal days of February, I made a separate sketchbook out of the blue Pescia paper to work out my winter frustrations for a couple of weeks, and I titled it Kinda Blue. This is one of my favorite drawing and printmaking papers, but during the course of completing this sketchbook with experimental this-and-that, I learned to love it for many other things too.

The sketchbook is 10x8", opens flat, has 16 pages give or take, and some fold-out three page spreads. It is made using a single sheet of standard 22x30" paper. I love making these books because I get a full little sketchbook out of one sheet, with no waste left over, which always makes me feel like I got a bargain! I generally use bookbinding thread, but in this case I couldn't find my thread and I used dental floss. It worked just fine. I learned how to make these books last year by watching Teesha Moore's outstanding video:

I did a few pages of pen and ink, covered a page with Golden Silverpoint Ground and did a silverpoint sketch of my daughter, made a three page spread of collage, and did a few acrylic paintings in it. I'll get those posted over the next several days, and hope to do a video flip-through too at some point. (I keep saying that but somehow never get through the learning curve to make it happen!)

These little books could never replace my hardbound sketchbooks; they are more like "special project" booklets. They come in handy for traveling when you can't lug a heavy sketchbook, and want a separate memory of a short trip, or if you have a special sketching project in mind that would be less than 16 pages. The book is very versatile, and you can build in various pockets using the fold-out sections if you have things to store from a trip, such as post cards, photographs, tickets, receipts, and notes. I used a couple of small pieces of the Pescia paper to make color notes and test assorted media. Then I made a pocket with the front flap and used it to store them, so I would have them for reference while I worked through the book. Those note cards came in handy to remember what materials and specific colors I used for the sketches.

Monoprinting in a Sketchbook Part 2 --- Plein Air Monotypes

11x14" Monotype print across the two page spread

of an 8.5x11" Stillman & Birn Zeta hardbound sketchbook

After spending some time doing the prepared backgrounds in my sketchbook with the Gelli Printing Plate, which I showed in Part I, it was time to explore more painterly monotype prints. After a few rainy days, a gorgeous day finally arrived, and I was too exhausted to head out to paint on location somewhere. I wanted to stay home. I brought all my gear out to the patio for an afternoon of plein air monoprinting. I was excited about trying this across the two page spread of my sketchbook, like I'd done the backgrounds. As you can see, it worked out fabulously well and printed right up to the gutter on both sides. As I stated in Part I of this monoprinting series, it would be ever so much better if they would make the plate size 11x17, rather than 12x14!

I set out a folding table and covered our patio table, and prepared for an afternoon of relaxed image-making. 

One of the tricky things about monotype prints is that when you paint on the plate, you need to create your image in reverse. The image will flip when you press your print. (This is especially important if you are creating text!) This was all so new to me, and I had a hard enough time wrapping my head around the whole technique of getting the paint onto the plate in a way that would transfer well. I decided not to worry about the reverse images for now, and allowed my landscape to reverse itself when I pressed the prints.

For these monotypes where I painted with brushes on the plate, I used Golden Open Acrylics. I had tried it the day before with the traditional Fluid acrylics and found that even though the fluids worked well for me when doing the textured backgrounds, they didn't give me enough working time for painting with brushes. Monotype printing is a somewhat subtractive process, so you need to not only be able to put paint down, but also to lift it off to reveal the white of the paper when the print is made. You need to think like a watercolor painter in getting lights down and working transparently, and like an oil painter in layering and removing color. It certainly keeps you thinking!

Later in the day, I moved over to the other side of the patio so I could take advantage of the view off the other side. I didn't like this one as much as the other, but I learned a tremendous amount from both of them, and look forward to further exploration of the monotype process. Generally speaking, it would be hard to do this plein air when traveling to locations, but definitely not impossible if you use a smaller Gelli plate and work in a smaller size. (You can see the wheels in my brain turning, can't you?)

Are you intrigued? Well, then definitely give these Gelli Printing Plates a try! They're inexpensive and a lot of fun. They give interesting effects and force you to think outside of the box --- always a good thing! If you have Stillman & Birn sketchbooks, you can take full advantage of their ability to open flat so you can print across the spread. Creating a sketchbook of monoprints is an exciting endeavor!

New Product Review --- Introducing Stillman and Birn Zeta

If you're a fountain pen aficionado, sketch with ink and dip pens, love Pitt Brush pens, or the coverage you get with colored pencils on smooth paper, or mixed media on a plate-like surface of extra heavy-weight paper, you're going to adore this new Zeta paper from Stillman & Birn. Think of their fabulous Epsilon surface in a thicker, more opaque version, and you'll have a pretty good idea of what this paper is all about. When I first tried the Epsilon paper, I loved it so much that I wanted an even thicker version. Now it's here! Many thanks to Stillman & Birn for making my dream come true.

I was sent some 8.5x11" sheets of the Zeta by Stillman & Birn when it first came in from the mill in France. When I first saw and felt the Zeta paper, there seemed to be such a world of possibilities for media that would work well on it, that I didn't know where to begin. I wanted to do a sketch that would showcase the potential of this smooth, slick surface. I did a few sketches in watercolor and ink of flowers, pitchers, vases and fruit, and played with assorted inks and washes. Then I decided to sketch some of the materials I'd like to use on this paper, which became the inspiration for this particular sketch. I tossed some of my favorite pens, brushes, markers, crayons and pencils into a brightly colored little pot that I normally use for my painting water, and set out some paint tubes as foreground elements.I felt the colors in the setup were strong enough to carry a strongly colored ink. Noodler's Black Swan in Australian Roses is one of my favorites. It is not lightfast. It is not waterproof. But there is something magical about the color, so I keep a wonderful Sheaffer 100 loaded with this ink, and it is always with me. I like the way this ink weaves the color harmony of the sketch together. I started this sketch with a few pencil lines, then went right in with ink and did the drawing, working mostly front to back. I used a wet brush to create some wash effects with the ink in shadow areas, followed by the watercolor. The last step was putting in small ink details, like some of the writing on the paint tubes, which would have run if I'd done it earlier in the process. I accidentally did this sketch on the reverse side of my sheet of dark ink test swatches, which proved to be a testament to the high opacity of this paper; no ink lines showed through at all!

The way the internal and external sizing of the paper permits the paint pigment to lie on top of the page yields a wonderful brightness in the color. The pigment does not spread out and mix together like with traditional watercolor paper, so it does take some getting used to and adapting. I'm really looking forward to breaking out my gouache on this paper. I think it will be a great match. The sketch below was done with transparent watercolor and just a bit of white gouache toward the end for the lights. But actually, the sizing allows for pretty easy lifting of pigment, so I probably could have reclaimed those lights without adding white. This sketch is 8.5x11.

I also did a sketch with an ink that I know to generally be very waterproof. Since waterproof fountain pen inks are at least partially challenged by heavy sizing, I wanted to find out if Noodler's Kung Te-Cheng would run when I added watercolor. It's one of my favorite inks, and I wanted to be sure it would stay put on this paper, no matter what else I did to it. Well, as you can see, the ink did not run at all. The sketch below was done while visiting with my friend Gingie at RiverWinds Gallery in Beacon. They have so many beautiful displays there that it's a fun place to break out a sketchbook! This one is also 8.5x11"on the Zeta paper, using a Kaweco fountain pen with a broad nib and transparent watercolor.

There is so much more to explore with this paper. I can't wait to have it in sketchbook form. Finally there is an ink-friendly paper that does not show through to the other side at all, so there will be no ghosting of images when working front and back on the pages. If you enjoy working on smooth paper, this is definitely one to check out. I know I'll be going through a lot of it. If you would like to also read another artist's review of this paper, check out this post by Jeanne Powers-Forsyth.

Golden Airbrush Paints and Silverpoint Ground --- Who knew!

Golden Airbrush Acrylics on Silverpoint Ground
8.5x11 across a two page spread in a Stillman & Birn Beta (180 lb) hardbound sketchbook

A few weeks ago I went to the Golden Artist Colors factory for the day. In addition to other things, I was able to spend a few hours with tech staff to discuss some things I've been trying to achieve with acrylic paints, and possible alternative solutions to my mission. One of the things I was able to play with that day were the Golden Airbrush Paints and Silverpoint Ground. When one thinks of painting with brushes, Golden Airbrush Paints are not what come to mind! (Neither does painting on Silverpoint Ground, or using Silverpoint Ground to reclaim whites in a painting.)

Well, I was smitten with the possibilities of these paints! First of all, they are very highly pigmented, yet already in an ink-like consistency. This gives me an ideal solution to achieve watercolor-like pigmentation without the pigment disappearing on me. Furthermore, the Airbrush Paints have something that the Golden Fluids do not: retarder! Yep, the retarder is already added to the paint, so it stays workable longer on the paper, and can be lifted before it sets if you work quickly.

The down side to working with these has been finding an easy way to use them on location while out hiking. I've been experimenting with a few different ideas as I've carted them around. This sketch of Kaaterskill Falls was done on location in about 40 minutes. The pages were prepared in advance with Golden Silverpoint Ground. I applied two coats, drying with a hair dryer in between. The idea was that by sealing the surface, it would be easier for me to make use of the lifting capabilities of the Airbrush Paints. On location, I coated the entire sketch area with Transparent Red Oxide mixed with some Airbrush Medium. Then I used a piece of paper towel, sometimes dipped in water, to pull out my lights, as if I were doing an underpainting in oils. I continued to work transparently for awhile, adding darks and pulling out lights, then used more opaque paint toward the end. I used a little Silverpoint Ground for some highlights and light, opaque color mixtures. It has a very heavy Titanium Dioxide content and worked great! I'd put about 5ml into a small empty vial from an ink sample.

Transporting paints in a watery consistency has issues for sure. For one thing, I can't use the same palette that I can for oils or acrylics, nor any flat or disposable palette, for that matter. I ended up using two small, rectangular watercolor palettes that I taped together on one end so it could fold in half. I put velcro on the outside to affix it to my lap board with the sketchbook. That's worked out pretty well so far. I bring several of the small airbrush bottles of color with me, and pour them into the palette on location. Cleanup is a serious mess, and remains the biggest problem for me to resolve when out on location.

Here's a photo of the scene with my sketch. Unfortunately the sketch was in shadow and the scene in light, so it's a bit hard to see the sketch.

Lihit Lab Teffa Pen Case and Ohto Comfort Sharp Lead Holders Reviews

This classy-looking pouch is the Lihit Lab Teffa Pen Case. I've filled it with watercolor supplies to serve as a medium size watercolor sketch kit.

Most of you have probably seen my recent review of the Nomadic PE-07 Pencil Pouch, which I use as a very lightweight sketch/watercolor kit. That one lives in my pocketbook and I do love it. It's perfect for those unexpected sketch opportunities that come along while waiting for someone or something.

But I do miss my real brushes, as well as my slightly larger palette for those real brushes. I wanted an additional kit to take hiking and plein air painting, that can work with my custom Arches Rough sketchbook, as well as with the larger 8.5x11" Stillman & Birn books. Those books require the ability to lay down more paint with larger brushes, at least half-pan size paint reservoirs, and larger mixing areas. I ordered this Lihit Lab case to serve that purpose.

As you can see, the front of the case does a great job of holding my brushes, pencils and pens. I considered putting a small piece of Velcro in the center of the upper strip to hold the brushes in place better. The Velcro would give the brushes more security, but would take up space and reduce the number I could fit in there. I decided to try it the way it is first, and it worked just fine.

The brushes were a bit too long and needed help to fit in there. I measured how long they could be, cut them down with a hacksaw, and sharpened the ends with a pencil sharpener so they could be used to scratch out twigs, branches, etc. Then I dipped the sharpened ends in Golden GAC100 to seal the wood. I used old sables and synthetics, since I didn't want to butcher any fabulous brushes that also might get lost out in the field while hiking.

On the left in the above image, you can see my latest favorite pencil lead holders. I've always loved 2mm leads, but the ordeal with trying to keep them sharpened made them difficult to use when convenience is a factor. Well, have I got great news for you! These lead holders come with a sharpener in the end. Yep, problem solved! They are only $3.30 each (and come with a lead) at Jetpens.

I have 2mm leads in many grades of hard/soft, so I made up some labels on a label-maker, and put a different lead into each of the four that I got. Here's a closeup shot of the top of the pencils so you can see where the sharpener is:

Turning over the center divider, you can see how I organized the back of this kit:

My palette and a Mini Mister slide right into the pocket together at the back of the case, and there's room above them for double clip-on oil painting palette cups to hold my water. By keeping one water cup for warm colors and one for cool, I can get by with very little water. As hikers know, water is both precious and heavy to carry! Opposite those are small web pocktes that I use for holding a mini scrubber (from the pharmacy, for brushing gums/teeth), a little vial of Pro White (in place of white tubed gouache), a kneaded eraser, and a metal binder clip.

The palette has velcro on the back of it, and gets affixed to a 9x12 piece of Coroplast (a very lightweight, corrugated plastic), which I've prepared with the other side of the velcro. The palette cups clip onto the bottom of the board, like this:

The empty side of the board then slides into the sketchbook to help keep it secure. You could use rubber bands around the board and page for additional security if you wish or use a large metal binder clip. I can sit very comfortably with everything on my lap this way, and have both hands free.

This little, light setup enables me to paint 11x17 without even having to cart an easel around with me! I put a weightless closed cell foam gardening cushion in my backpack and I can sit almost anywhere in comfort.

So, how did this work out in practice? It worked great! I've taken it out three or four times now, and have come away with a few conclusions:

1. The Lihit Pen Case is the perfect size for this kit. If it were any bigger, I'd be cramming it with more stuff that would be heavy and unnecessary for watercolor sketching. It fits the palette and exactly what I need to go with the palette. No more, no less.
2. I desperately need a squirrel mop brush for this kit, since this setup enables me to go large enough to make use of it. I'll have to buy one or two inexpensive ones to cut down because I am NOT butchering my Rekabs!
3. About half of the brushes I do have in here I won't need. I'm going to whittle down the assortment before I go out again.
4. Keeping the kneaded eraser in a plastic case is a pain in the neck and wastes time. I'm going to remove it from the case and stick it in with the brushes.

Nomadic PE-07 Pencil Pouch Review --- Peek inside my sketch kit!

Finally, here is my review of the Nomadic PE-07 Pencil Pouch, otherwise known as my lightweight sketch kit! I'm going to give you a peek inside to share what's traveling with me everywhere these days. I bought a Nomadic Messenger Bag quite some time ago and I use it so much that I thought I couldn't go wrong with some more of their products. The pouch comes in lots of nice colors, and I love red. The small zippered compartment in the front is a very convenient place to keep items that I need to reach for first --- like a pen, pencil and eraser. I can do my initial sketch without having to even open up the bag. If I decide to paint or use brush pens, I then proceed to the larger, inside compartment.

Above is a photo of the pouch from the side, so you can see some of the nifty dividers, with supplies in there too. (The pouch looks orange in this photo, but only the inside is orange.) I like having that thin, center section with the zipper. It gives me a safe place to store my Escoda travel brushes, where they can't fall out even if the bag tips while open. I took out the pen, mini watercolor set, and waterbrush to do the sketch above out on location. Removing the rest of the contents, you can see how much I'm able to fit into this clever little bag in the image below:

Inside the pouch is stashed a mini set of gouache as well as the watercolor set, a vial that I filled with Dr. Martin's Bleedproof White, my beloved Kaweco Lilliput fountain pen, a few water brushes, three Escoda travel brushes, one travel squirrel mop brush, a small travel sable with protective sleeve, a grey Pentel Aquash brush pen, a Kuretake refillable brush pen, architect pencil, little mouth/gum scrubber to scrub out paint, Mini Mister to spritz my palette or sketch, small container of water (little yellow bottle), palette cup, two metal office binder clips to hold down sketchbook pages, UniBall Vision rollerball pen, and small piece of eraser. Whew, that was a mouthful! Typing it all out, it's hard to believe that it all fit easily into the pouch. I have since added a piece of sponge in there as well, to wipe my brushes as I paint.

This pouch is so so well designed and constructed. It has just enough compartments and dividers for me to separate items into categories, without having so many that they take up needed space or make it hard to find what I'm looking for. It weighs nothing, is small enough to stash in my purse, and super-convenient to toss it into my backpack if I'm going hiking or traveling and need an ultra-light art kit. This and a sketchbook, and I'm good to go anywhere. I've already taken it on many hikes and outings. Like all art bags and sketch kits, it will continue to change and evolve, so I'll be sure to show it again in a year or so. It will be interesting to see how the contents have changed in that time.

So, is there anything negative about this bag? Well, initially I wished it was a bit larger. However, I'm now glad that it's not. One thing I've learned about myself over time is that no matter how big a sketching bag is, I know how to fill it to the brim, and I'm going to do that! Therefore, the secret for me to traveling light is to have a small bag that can only accommodate so much. In my dreams, I have a large, light bag. It contains everything I ever wanted, and there is plenty of room left over. But in reality, my bags are always packed to the brim with way more stuff than I could ever use in a single outing. Clearly the supplies in the photo above are more than ample for a sketch outing. One day last weekend, I forced myself to cut the contents in half, and I didn't find myself missing a thing when I went to sketch! So now I can honestly say that the pouch is perfect for its intended purpose. I love it. And it's mine. And I'm not giving it up. So if you want your own, you'll just have to hustle on over to JetPens and get one for yourself.

Dogwood Blossoms

Image can be clicked for a larger version

6x18" on Stillman & Birn Beta paper

Watercolor

My favorite way to work in watercolor is to Just Do It. No pencil lines (or just a few for compositional guidance), no ink......Just straight in directly with a brush and pigment, getting as much down in a single pass as possible. There's something very unique about the way watercolor glows and jumps off the page when it's not fussed with. About six months ago, I ditched the non-transparent colors in my watercolor palette, and found that also made a huge difference in getting the paint and paper to give each other their very best.

That's not to say that I don't need to occasionally bail myself out with opaque lights like Cadmium Yellow or even Titanium White, or that I don't enjoy working with opaque color at times too --- especially on a toned surface. I do. But in restructuring my palette over the past six months, I decided to use gouache for that purpose. After all, if you need to go opaque, that's the way to do it. I took one of the Schmincke palettes that comes with two rows of half pans, removed the metal plate, and squeezed five (yes, five!) rows of half pans into it. Three of those rows were watercolor, and two were gouache. You may recall the post I did about that palette not too long ago. Here's my color chart from that set, as of last week:

It gave me a lot to choose from, but it proved to be heavy for hiking in the mountains. So last week, I pulled out my old palette, which is this one:

 

I discovered that by removing the metal plate and turning the half pans sideways, I could fit a fourth row into that smaller palette, and it's a lot lighter too. It was hard deciding which colors would stay and which would go, but this is the configuration I eventually ended up with:

 Yep, I'm down to one row of gouache, and kept three rows of transparent watercolor pigments. The dogwood blossoms sketch was one of my test drives for this new setup. So far, it seems to be working, and I'm happy with the lighter weight. Of course, when I need to travel super-light, I can always resort to the mini set I posted yesterday.

This is all a long-winded way of saying that as artists, our ideas continue to change, evolve, and come back around. It's all part of the fun of exploring our world of materials. What we work with depends on what we're painting, what we're painting on, how much time we have, what we're able to carry, and where we're going. And of course as watercolor painters well know, one can never have too many palettes! ;)

I know I promised a tour of my little red sketch kit for today, but I realized I need to take one more photo and do the image adjustment before I can write that post. It will come soon though!

When you're short on sketch time, make a grid!

11x17", across a two page spread in a Stillman & Birn 8.5x11" hardbound sketchbook

Watercolor, Pitt Brush Pens, Fountain Pens, or whatever else I had next to me at the time!

You can click this image to enlarge it. 

It's that time of year when after a winter of being indoors and mostly sketching, I can get out and return to my life as a plein air painter! I have not stopped sketching by any means, but my more finished work is now being done in paint or on separate sheets of rag paper. (You can always check in to see those on my other blog.) 

I feel it's very important to continue sketching, and not give that up when the going gets tough. One of the things I do when time gets tight is I make a grid and sketch a series over time. I have several grids going at any given time on different themes. I try to select themes that hone specific skills. This one was started a few weeks ago as a means of practicing elipses and symmetry. Whenever I had a morning without having to immediately dash off somewhere, I sketched my coffee mug. I sketched the last mug this morning. These were all done directly in ink, so warts and all, I had to live with whatever came out of the pens. 

I'm really enjoying this larger sketchbook, and it certainly presents great opportunities for gridded series! I have a few portrait grids going (32 portrait boxes across a  two page spread!) and some other subjects too. Way fun. Great practice. Quick to do. No excuses!