Category: Daily Sketch

Morning barista sketch

Went on a 5k run and then went to my favourite cafe and did a quick sketch of the barista. Had more time this morning than last time so this sketch is more detailed.

Before watercolour was added.

Morning sketch at my favourite cafe

My favourite barista, Orit, at work in Bakery North Dizengoff.

Stillman and Birn pocket beta, Windsor and Newton 0.5 fineliner, Roman Szmal Aquarius watercolours.

The sketch

Paris 2024 Breaking Sketch and Building New Palettes

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.

Samples of some of the colours I considered swapping in. Amethyst Genuine was a genuine disappointment – I don’t think I’ve seen such a bland, pale, washed out purple anywhere.

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.

Quick Paris Olympics Breaking sketch

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.

This box came as part of a set of two, one of which had paints in it.

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.

Quick sketch: Joe

I want to live like him if I ever get to live to my 90s.

Uni-ball pin 0.8 fineliner

Two Traveler’s Notebook sketches.

I’m still working my way through the Inkvent inks (9 pens left to write dry), and I’m trying to sketch more even on busy weeks. So I dusted off an old Traveler’s Notebook that I set up years ago and didn’t fill, and I started playing with fountain pens.

Brown Paper Bag Sketch

This is a 5 minute sketch of Belle, the Australian sheepdog. It was done with a Sailor Fude 40 degree fountain pen and Graf Von Faber-Castell carbon black ink on a paper bag that held my sandwich.

Belle the Aussie

Trying out a new sketching setup so I decided to sketch Belle. She’s a young Australian Shepherd that belongs to a colleague and regularly comes to the office.