watercolor - i love granulating pigments (i find daniel smith paints to have some especially interesting ones), so i was just slopping paint on the paper to watch it run together and separate. then i added a little house because i thought it made it look like a thing.
watercolor - i enjoy getting that watery effect using wet-on-wet with the blues and letting them bloom and shift. then i added a little boat because apparently i cannot just leave things alone.
watercolor - this is loosely based on a design i saw somewhere. now it just looks like eggs to me.
watercolor and ink - when i cannot come up with anything specific to put in a sketchbook, i often fall back on these lined sections with watercolor washes.
watercolor - i usually incorporate ink, or at least pencil lines, in watercolor landscape sketches. here i skipped that step and ended up with something a bit abstract, which i like (using the hushwing handmade watercolors).
watercolor - an abstracted landscape with a bit of a rainbow vibe, using hushwing handmade watercolors.
watercolor - i made several simple little landscapes using a more limited earth tone palette from hushwing handmade watercolors.
watercolor - a simple little landscape in earth tones by hushwing handmade watercolors
watercolor - a little landscape using a limited palette with handmade watercolors from designs by rachel beth.
watercolor and ink - one of a series of small color studies for my non-objective pieces. i need to be better about doing studies before attempting a complete piece.
watercolor and ink - one of a series of small color studies for my non-objective pieces.
watercolor and ink - one of a series of small color studies for my non-objective pieces.
watercolor and ink - one of a series of small color studies for my non-objective pieces.
watercolor and ink - i did this during a break at jury duty. used some cotman colors to make shapes somewhere between paper lanterns and cocoons. take note: student grade watercolors on cellulose paper do not layer well. they just reactivate and mix into each other.
watercolor and ink - using leftover colors from my cotman sketch box mixing wells. i hate wasting paint, so a good way to do something with leftover mixtures is just to do a design in your sketchbook.
watercolor - just playing. again having the problem with inexpensive paint and paper not layering effectively, but it is not terrible.
watercolor and ink - this used to be a page i hated, so i obliterated it and made a bit of a mess, but i don’t hate it.
ink - this began as theater seats with peoples’ heads peeking above them, and it turned in my head into these hunched men marching off into another dimension. then there are bird shapes because those have to show up somewhere eventually for everyone.
ink - i was trying a new pen i really like (aside from the fact that it is not waterproof). i am really drawn to hexagons, but they always reference honeycombs, so that might be a bad thing? bees seem to have the hexagon market covered.
watercolor and ink - most sketchbook artists do one of these spreads eventually i think.
watercolor - i was practicing different types of washes, but the grade of the paper combined with my issues making smooth washes worked against me here.
watercolor and water-soluble pastel - more wash practice, and i put some leaves over it to add interest and to play with my neocolor II wax pastels.
water-soluble pastels and ink - i went to the zoo. this is what happened after.
watercolor and ink - this is the first page that went on to inspire some of my more “complete” pieces. this line motif comes up several times in my finished work. this is where i began to realize the value of a sketchbook in informing bigger things, not just in practicing techniques and testing materials.
watercolor and ink - i used almost this exact sketch, just a little more refined, to create a finished piece.
watercolor and ink - another sketch that brought forward a major component of some finished pieces. i use the small circles and dots with watercolor washes in several bigger pieces.
watercolor and ink - i am constantly making little ink and watercolor patterns when i need something to do with my hands.
gouache - one of my first times trying gouache. i enjoy it, but i think i need a lot more practice before i have any confidence with it. i do like the overall vibe of this picture, but that might be more a credit to the reference photo than to anything i did.
watercolor and ink - a quick self-portrait in blues. i was tired both in person and on paper.
watercolor - this was a landscape from life sitting in a state park in live oak, florida. i did not use ink lines here, which is unusual for me and landscape sketching.
watercolor and ink - cypress knees in sumter, south carolina. i like very much how this turned out with the lines, layers, and colors, and i would like to make a more complete piece out of it eventually.
watercolor and pencil - sketching in a park in sumter, south carolina. i was really struggling to mix a dark enough color for that oblong shape in the front, to the point that i didn’t finish the sketch because i got annoyed.
water-soluble graphite - my first time trying these pencils. it is a different look, but i have not yet gotten the hang of it. (sitting in a park in charleston, south carolina)
watercolor and ink - urban sketching in charleston, south carolina.
gouache - this sketch brought me frustration and made me realize why acrylic gouache is easier than regular gouache. gouache rewets and comes off without much water or scrubbing, so getting good layers is tough. i don’t have as much trouble with acrylic gouache, or even with standard watercolor. i still would like to make a complete piece based on this sketch, though.
gouache - i was playing and made a landscape-esque picture using gouache rectangles that ended up reminding me of colored tissue paper. it isn’t a style i would likely pursue, but it looks fun.
watercolor and ink - i am not sure what i was doing with something reminiscent of wheat and… ? but it does look a little cool.
watercolor and ink - sketching in the back yard at my in-laws’ house. i am partial to these little sketches.
watercolor - trying a couple of tree shapes using negative space (my first experience with masking fluid).
ink - this one i ended up copying onto proper watercolor paper to tweak it a little and create a finished piece.
watercolor and ink - created during an especially long wait at the orthodontist’s office. downside: they forgot i was in the waiting room. upside: i finished a sketch.
watercolor - i started making different brush strokes and mixing some colors i liked. this is what i ended up with.
ink - i used the pentel pocket brush pen for the first time here. i enjoy using it, but i discovered that it transfers to facing pages, even after it is dry. this one was done during a church service. i truly always have a sketchbook with me.
ink - i am obsessed with dots and stippling. really i seem to love anything that becomes a tedious task.
ink - i did this during a political meeting. i like the design and texture of it.
watercolor and ink - sketching in a little park in nacogdoches, texas. i used one of these trees later to paint as a birthday gift for my grandmother. she likes trees.
watercolor - someone gave me a little dot card sample of schmincke’s transparent brown, so i used it to make little monochromatic patterns in my sketchbook.
watercolor and ink - i feel like everyone else was doing watercolor galaxies at some point, so of course i had to give it a try. i did show a friend who does not really paint how to do it, and it became a fun project for her i think.
watercolor and ink - i really love this precious little winter cabin situation for reasons i cannot explain.
watercolor and ink - This page and the next one were the beginning of my fascination with combining watercolor and ink in this abstract way, letting the shapes and meetings of the colors inform the placement and shapes of the ink.
watercolor and ink - This is the other page of the pair that led to my current use of watercolor and ink together in abstract and non-objective pieces. I think I like this one better than the other, primarily because the other looks like a deformed dragon and I cannot stop seeing it.
watercolor - i used some designs by rachel beth handmade watercolors to make a little castle in the clouds with sparkly pink paint.
watercolor and ink - i had just watched donnie darko. for about the fifth time.
watercolor and ink - playing with more colors in humanoid bunny shapes.
ink - a simplified abstract mountain and cloud landscape. i love these little doodles, but sadly they would not translate so well in larger format. maybe they could be tiny pieces of a piece.
ink - another little “cute” mountain landscape. i feel like this sort of thing might be fun in a children’s book.
watercolor - using paints from designs by rachel beth. it started as a sort of lake in some cloudy hills, but the more i look at it, the more it becomes a cloudy hand offering a rock.
watercolor - i dig the glowy softness of this. this could be a bigger finished piece with a few edits. i’d buy it. maybe one else would. but that’s fine. (handmade watercolor again from designs by rachel beth)
watercolor - i intended it to be more of a glowing chasm in the center, but it became a bright splat on top of a mauve surface. i think it’s because it looks like shading on the mauve to the right side of that bright shape.
ink and watercolor - mindless doodling (during a meeting - i really need to learn to pay attention without occupying my hands before i offend someone too badly) that ended up making me think of a mountain amusement park.
ink and watercolor - on vacation, i was sitting in the corner doing a figure study (one could accurately argue that a trip with other people is not the ideal time for drawing nudes), when my friend’s four year old approached me to ask what i was drawing. i quickly flipped the page before she could see, and instead asked what she would like me to draw. she requested a “dinosaur park.” i asked what goes in a dinosaur park, and she asked for dinosaurs, a volcano, rocks, and trees. i have no idea how to draw dinosaurs, so that is my defense of the bat-lizards.
ink and watercolor - another mountainous ink line drawing with some watercolor washes. another example of church drawing. (i really am paying attention. i just feel a compulsion to draw any time i am sitting still.)
watercolor - this is a tiny wet-on-wet scene. i just thought it was precious, and i like the intense colors.
watercolor - drawing during a social event. i do not enjoy social situations with strangers, so i find that doodling serves both as something to hide behind and as an icebreaker if someone wants to talk about it. i like the bright fruits.
watercolor - a quiet, repetitive task that i found calming. i think it has a pleasant look.
watercolor and ink - i don’t remember where i was going with this, but i like the sap green, magenta, and the metallic gold ink (difficult to see in a photo) together.
ink and pencil - another little ink design, and the bottom is a sketch to help me decide on the composition for a portrait. a note about art work habits: once you start a thing, especially if it is going pretty well, just suck it up and finish it. don’t carry it around fidgeting with it and putting off making hard decisions and commitments in your piece. why do i say this? two reasons. first, it becomes a “thing” that gets built up in your head, and the piece becomes more intimidating to finish as you put it off. second, you run more of a risk of ruining your piece in some other way the longer you put off doing something with it. i learned this working on the piece for which i did this sketch: i had to toss it because something got smudged on it since i carried it around for weeks.
acrylic gouache and ink - another ink doodle. i like this one more that i like a lot of my other ink designs, i think because of the line variation and the layering of the bubbly shapes. the coral was just a fun little trial playing with putting ink over acrylic gouache. i like the bright colors, as usual.
acrylic gouache - one of my more popular pages in my sketchbook, i think because people prefer the recognizable image and the intense colors. this was my first time trying acrylic gouache, i think. i enjoyed it for the layering capabilities and the matte finish. (i prefer acrylic gouache over traditional acrylic in a sketchbook, because the shinier finish of acrylic paint seems occasionally to stick to facing pages. i have not had this problem with the matte acrylic gouache.)
watercolor - i think this is mount fuji, maybe? it is just a practice page based off something from a photo website. i most like the two blue strips in the bottom half.
gouache and ink - this is a sketch done in response to the book i was reading, neil gaiman’s “neverwhere”.
watercolor and ink - i went down the rabbit hole here, treating this like i would a work-intensive final piece. so i did not actually finish this, because it was taking an age. if this were a full-sized final piece though, i would be happy with this direction and would finish it.
watercolor - i was sick with bronchitis, but i had committed to staying up all night chaperoning a youth group lock-in at church. this is what i did when i had enough light to doodle. note: being the only person sitting up all night gets boring, with or without a sketchbook.
watercolor - working on a still life at an art league meeting. i don’t do a lot of still lifes (still lives?). maybe i should do that more.
watercolor pencil - at an art league meeting, we did a portrait session drawing each other. i think these were two or three minute sketches.
watercolor pencil - the left portrait was done during a portrait session at an art league meeting. the right one (which i found pretty successful) is of my brother-in-law during a dnd session.
watercolor pencil - the left is someone at a meeting. pretty sure he didn’t know i was drawing him. the right is someone out of my head. i like the contrast in texture between the untouched watercolor pencil and the pencil with the addition of water.
watercolor - staying up into the small hours of the morning, listening to music by my favorite female singers of the 90s. thus the portrait of fiona apple. (though i love her more recent work as well.)
watercolor and ink - again with the 90s women theme, cat power. i had just done a partially finished watercolor portrait, but i didn’t like where it was going, so i kept adding ink lines until i felt it was complete. i might try this out in finished pieces as well going forward.
ink - a caterpillar with confidence? not sure what i thought i was doing, but i like him well enough.
watercolor and ink - a study of a gem that i did not quite finish, but you get the idea. i think watercolor looks beautiful in the layering of gems, but i am pretty sure an acrylic gouache would be easier since it would simplify the layering process. the landscape is from a photo reference by robin sealark. i simplified some shapes and pushed the colors a bit, and i find it pretty successful.
watercolor - from a friend’s camp on the river on july 4.
gouache - based on a photo by @nikonej on instagram. i like it a good deal, but i think that it because his photo was so nice, not really my rendition of it specifically.
watercolor and ink - I like doors, and I like bright or odd colors. These are some random doors from Google.
watercolor and ink - More doors! More colors!
watercolor and ink - I did several pattern pages playing with different watercolor sets. These are handmade paints from Pfeiffer Art Supply. They come in happy colors with happy, bird-themed names.
watercolor and ink - Not very creative in terms of a pattern, but there it is. I like dots. These are handmade paints from Designs by Rachel Beth. She comes up with a lot of interesting and unique colors and names, but they definitely paint more like art journal/sketchbook paints to me. The texture of the paint causes any ink used on top to rub off onto facing pages. Still very fun colors though.
watercolor and ink - The ink smudges on here are from the previous sketchbook page with the circles and dots. I used Daniel Smith paints for this one, and I was thinking about rocks and trickling water in a stream.
watercolor and ink - I don’t have much of an opinion on this one. It started in an odd direction, and I thought adding the ink lines would help. I’m not sure it did.
watercolor and ink - I thought I would eventually finish that brown netting pattern. I did not. I realized I was just procrastinating. I do love these paints by Old Holland. They have a thicker consistency than most of the other watercolors I have used, but they still have good transparency.
watercolor - Meh. These are four handmade paints I picked up from Hydra Colour. I think they would be a nice addition to a larger palette, but I made an odd choice in selecting this specific color set. Also, the light pink is more of a metallic rose gold, which does not pick up on camera.
watercolor and ink - This one I like, but the shapes and colors remind me of Saved by the Bell. The paints are by Turner.
watercolor and ink - This is my favorite of the pattern pages. I think the lines and the watercolor shapes go together well, which I cannot say for several of the others. The paints are from Kuretaki Gansai Tambi, a set which is not lightfast, so I cannot use it in finished pieces, but I like the big pans and the intense colors for playing in the sketchbook.