Category: Sketchbook Practise

  • I See It With My Own Eyes

    I See It With My Own Eyes

    I have been drawing eyes like this today, and watching the evil Israel has yet again meted out to a hospital, its staff, and the patients. That’s all I have. Til the morn, Suzanne 315/400

  • Look Up

    Look Up

    I used my jumbo retractable pencil with the 5B lead for this one, and played with the reference a little. After the art, I went for a 5 mile walk, and while we were out, felt the weather change and get colder, which it hasn’t been this week, it has been far too warm for…

  • Pondering

    Pondering

    Contemplating the idea of a daily sketch as I have a tendency to forget about the joys of dry media. Pondering the new year, which comes after Hogmanay, and the Word of the Year, which is going to be a phrase it seems. I have definitely entered the end of year twilight zone where I…

  • Xmas Sketch

    Xmas Sketch

    Hope you have had a good day if you are celebrating, and if you aren’t celebrating, I hope the same. I got a sketchbook among my gifts, so what better way to keep the streak going than to test it out with a quick wee portrait. I also got a guillotine, so let’s herald a…

  • Painting Saves the Mood

    Painting Saves the Mood

    I had all sorts of plans for today, and a meticulous To Do List, and I was fired up and ready to conquer life, the universe and everything. The first item on my list was try, again, to contact the retailer who sent me two canvases with rips in the middle of them, which I…

  • One Hour Portrait

    One Hour Portrait

    Lots of painting and pottering in the studio room today, a very satisfying day. I pushed myself out of my comfort zone and set a timer for one hour with the challenge of doing a portrait study in oils. This is not something I have any practise in, but I figure if I can enjoy…

  • Sponge Brush Portrait

    Sponge Brush Portrait

    I’m still playing with this reference from Unsplash that I like, and today I was playing with one of the paint colours I mixed the other day and a sponge brush. I’m really enjoying the sponge brushes just now. I also spent a lot of time trying to organise collage fodder, gel prints, and all…

  • Recycled Stars and Inky Drips

    Recycled Stars and Inky Drips

    I have been busy in my studio today doing lots of different fun things, and one of the fun things I got up to was recycling some pages from an old journal to turn them into collage fodder. I checked the pages first to see if there were any amazing insights, or delicious memories, but…

  • Batching Gesso

    Batching Gesso

    Most of my time today was spent priming canvases and other substrates as that’s about as much as I could muster while Storm Darragh blew everything around. Gesso on canvas isn’t very photogenic, so when the lull in the storm came, I did some more crow sketching in my A4 sketchbook. I used a brown…

  • Colour Play

    Colour Play

    Playing with my homemade stay-wet palette and some colour mixing today. I find the stay-wet palette a little challenging because it has sides, and is therefore an enclosed and limited space, and this sort of requires a bit of structure and organisation of paint, and I am not sure I am built that way. But…

  • Playing in my new space

    Playing in my new space

    I spent today playing with different things, just seeing how my revamped space works for me. It will take me a minty to get used to things, but so far it’s a lot more fun to play in, and a lot more flexibility in what I can get up to. Having my old tall table…

  • Cheap Sketchbook Success

    Cheap Sketchbook Success

    In theory doing a straight swap of two bookcases and a table to a larger space than the space they were in should be quite a simple undertaking, but no… I’ve completely changed my studio room space, and as much as I am knackered from the decluttering and organising, I am soooooo happy with my…