Month: November 2025
-
Pan Pastels Sketch Spread
Both these pages were prepped before I travelled, and let me just say I was not in the mood for yellow, especially with limited supplies. It’s a fun reference, though, so it’s in the sketchbook as a first go. I am used to standing for painting, and I was really struggling with sitting to work…
-
New pose monochrome
I have been wandering about in the woods today, so didn’t get as in-depth with this pose as intended. An acrylic sketchy under-layer finished off with pan pastels. Til the morn, Suzanne 639/700
-
Feet Dangling
Starting the day with in-person art supplies shopping is better than coffee. Starting the day with excellent bargains on good quality sketchbooks, and half-price canvases is better than, well, coffee with cream. I also bought some thick foam for making stamps, and a bottle of clear gesso. I didn’t bring my clear gesso, but I…
-
Hands and Hands
Painting at a dining table instead of my studio, so embracing the limitations. I’ve left the hands for tomorrow, or another day, because daylight runs out this far north. Til the morn, Suzanne 637/700
-
Crouching
I have been distracted today, but I got this far with this pose and idea. There’s a lot more to do, but the basic shapes are there. This is on 300gsm hot press paper, not my sketchbook, so the paint is doing different things. Til the morn, Suzanne 636/700
-
Don’t Move
I’m completely smitten with my pan pastels, and I don’t think I have even scratched the surface of their versatility. Here I’m using them over acrylic, and I’m loving how this turned out, especially given it went through a particularly “ugly stage”. Someone was waxing unlyrical about drawing from reference photos recently, and the problem…
-
Pan Pastels Portrait Set
I had quite a productive day today and worked on several things, but the highlight of the day was the arrival of a set of pan pastels. I don’t usually buy sets of things, but the offer price was too good to pass up, and the only colour I already had was the white, so…
-
Grasp Too
Following on from yesterday’s study, I used the same reference and changed the palette slightly by swapping the black with ultramarine, and adding pyrrole red. I really like the pyrrole red added to the background, and I like the way both paintings sit together in the spread, which I haven’t taken a photo of, I…
-
Grasp
This is the first time I have used tube black in this sketchbook, having been experimenting with chromatic blacks as a side-shoot of this project. It definitely gives a different feel to a piece. I threw some yellow on the page too, because I never use yellow in a very yellow way. I didn’t like…
-
Honing Ms Drips
There was a lot of playing in sketchbooks today, and lots of ideas came out of that, and there will hopefully be further play and exploration going on there. I realised that I had been avoiding this canvas for some reason, no idea why, so I put it up on the easel and pushed and…
-
Twisting Twirls
Experimenting with yesterday’s happy accident, and thinking I’m going to keep experimenting with this process. I predict an art supplies purchase coming up, as I only have two colours plus black and white of these pan pastels. I don’t even have a turquoise one. Shocking. Til the morn, Suzanne 630/700
-
Clear Gesso Rescue
I started the day doing some fun sketchbook practise abstracting shapes from some landscape photos. This is not my usual practise, and it was a lot of fun. Once I was done there was some leftover paint, so I used it up in my A3 sketchbook to start a background. I was especially taken with…
Thrummie Bizzum 