A blog about writing, sketching, running and other things
It’s my birthday and I’ve decided to celebrate by starting a new sketching challenge inspired by Andrew James.
My rules are:
Here’s the first sketch:
This is way outside my comfort zone, but it was fun sketching this.
I’ve been unhappy with my watercolour palette lately, and so I’ve been experimenting with new colours instead of some of the old ones. I usually swap out one colour at a time, try out the new colour for a while, and then either keep it or swap it out for something else. This time I’m doing my usual swap procedure, and also building a completely new palette on the side. The idea is to speed up the new colour discovery process, as there are 5-6 colours that I want to replace in my current palette, and that’s a lot.
The first colour to leave was Daniel Smith Cerulean Blue Chromium. I have too many similar blues and it’s slowing me down having to decide between them every time I need a blue. In its place I swapped Daniel Smith Rhodenite Genuine, which is a bright pink.
I then sketched one of the scenes from the 2024 Paris Olympics Breaking final, which I was going to see in person before I had to cancel my trip. Luckily my brother was there and sent me photos and videos, which I had fun sketching from. There was a lot of purple in this scene, so I had fun mixing Rhodenite with blues and purples on my palette.
The new palette is something I’m building in a Daniel Smith plastic paintbox. It’s not a box that I’d regularly use (it doesn’t have enough mixing space for me), but it’s useful for the testing I want to do.
I then set up a legend in my sketchbook:
Next I broke ou the Alvaro Catagnet Daniel Smith Master Artist set and filled the pans with paint. I’ll give them 2-3 days to completely dry out before finishing the legend and trying them out. I would never have built a palette which is so heavily skewed towards reds, but this is part of the experiment – after a heavily blue skewed palette it’s time to try something new.
I can’t wait to give these new paints a try. I’ve worked with the Schmincke versions of Yellow Ochre (I no longer use it because of its opacity), Viridian (way to artificial a green for my tastes), Ultramarine Blue and Cobalt Blue, but it will be interesting to see Daniel Smith’s take on these colours.
I want to live like him if I ever get to live to my 90s.
Am I starting a new sketch journaling habit? Too early to tell. Meanwhile, I’m having fun teaching myself to sketch fast and loose.
Used a Uniball pin 0.8 fineliner and three Stabilo Boss highlighters in their new colour range on a Cass Art recycled paper sketchbook.
So I was sick, which made sketching impossible for a few days. I’m still sick but I’m slightly better, so I sat down and powered through the rest of the missing sketches.
As I mentioned last time 61-68 were draw from life, the rest from earthsworld. This site is so much better for reference photos than the flickr gallery I used in previous years that it affected both my speed and my sketching quality. Also, I had a lot more fun sketching these portraits this year. The Leonardo Momento Zero Bohemian Twilight fine nibbed fountain pen was the perfect sketching companion, and Diamine fireside snug performed well on the Stillman and Birn Alpha paper. The larger landscape format also helped make these a joy.
Here are the previous days’ sketches: day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4, day 5, day 6, day 7.
This sketching challenge is always great to do, as it really pushes me outside my comfort zone. If you haven’t yet, I highly recommend giving it a try.
And as usual, which one is your favourite?
I really didn’t feel like sketching today, as I discovered that my cat has a large lump on his hind leg so I need to take him to the vet tomorrow. I’m worried about him and so considered skipping today entirely, but ended up sketching some people to distract myself. Same setup as yesterday – Leonardo Momento Zero fountain pen, Diamine Fireside Snug ink, Stillman and Birn Alpha.
Three things happened today:
The result is sketches 12 to 40 (yes, I got that many done in a single sitting). The fact that I have much better reference photos made such a huge difference, as I didn’t have to waste time digging through urban landscape photos in search for half decent portraits. Also, the Earthworld photographs feature People with a capital P – frumpy, old, ugly, real and incredibly beautiful to sketch. The great Leonardo Momento Zero Bohemia Twilight fountain pen with its fine nib and Diamine Fireside Snug also added to the fun – I love this pen and ink combo so much I’m likely going to use it for the rest of the 60 sketches.
So, now which one is your favourite? I have too many to choose from.
I had a busy day yesterday, so I only got three sketches in and didn’t have time to post them. Numbers 9-11 were what I added, with number 9 being sketched with a vintage Parker Vacumatic filled with Diamine Ash and numbers 10 and 11 being sketched with a Franklin Christoph 45L and Diamine Eau de Nil. I loved the lines that the Parker Vacumatic produced, but it’s an extra fine nibbed fountain pen and it really struggled on the tooth of the Stillman and Birn Alpha. These were the last batch sketched from the Street Photography group on Flickr. I found a better source for photos thanks to a great tip from Tina from the wonderful Fuelled by Clouds and Coffee blog.
I almost didn’t post today as I wasn’t up to sketching and I got only three sketches in, none of them great. But I like it when creators show their failures so I’m doing it myself today: my lack of shoulder mobility coupled with a lack of sleep and the difficulty of the subject made for a bad sketching day.
Parker 51 with Montblanc The Beatles Psychedelic Purple on a Stillman and Birn Alpha. Sketched 6-8 were done today. As usual the goal for me is to get to 100 even if it takes more than a week.
Celebrate your failures.
Writing at Large 