Sketchbook Update 96 (Patreon)

Hi again! The weeks have flown by since last update, and I feel like I didn't get as much work as I wanted done. However. This was not reflected by my sketchbook, which as usual is an insane amount of pages. I don't know what's possessing me lately but I hope it sticks around.

We had a good holiday near the lake district, with sooo much good food that I had fun drawing. Honestly for me the food is a solid 50% of the reason to go on holiday, so we won in that department. A little sad because the weather was cloudy the whole time- apart from the two travel days! Cursed. Those days ended up being my favourites, because we went swimming on the first day, and I went paddling on the last day. I am a plant, sunshine…water…. good.

The estuary near our airbnb, we had to walk SO far to get to the water to swim, and the current was crazy! We stayed in the parts where we could stand up, but it was still fun.

Furness Abbey had this beautiful red brick that looked amazing contrasting the green surroundings.

I see a stream and I turn into a junk collecting goblin. I got very wet trouser legs in the second pic- this was as we were driving home too lol, I should've switched to trunks.

[Forgive me, this next bit is So Long.]

The airbnb we stayed in was soooo fucking lovely tbh I wish we had spent more time inside! They had a beautiful Beatrix Potter book with her landscapes from the lake district, and it made me really want to try doing more watercolour with lines. I went to an art shop (mandatory every time I travel lol, there's none near me) and I was wistfully looking at the very expensive watercolour sets, but decided I'd get one online after more thought. I did pick up some extra pastel colours and some pastel paper tho.

Confessions of an art supply hoarder lol:

 If you haven't noticed I absolutely have an art supply obsession haha, I try to keep it to things I'll use, but boy, I am always tempted by everything. 

Anyway I spent 100 years looking up the optimal watercolour tube colours to make up my own set, and then sat down with my mini student set to check that i really did want a larger size/better quality set and promptly was like. What am I doing lol.

The one I have is already good for plein air bc its tiny, and honestly as soon as I started painting this cliff in watercolour I was like man…I hate this.

The transparency is just…not very satisfying to me. The next page I was like fuck this I'm pulling out my gouache, and I had a much better time 😅. I have put a little of my gouache in some pans, I’ll update with how that goes :P.

Anyway like…because I didn't buy a watercolour set my little brain was like. Well. I want Something nice since I had already mentally put aside the money for it. 

So! Earlier this year I bought a pen and (a blue) ink, and I was pushing aside the urge to get another so I could have a peach ink pen too. At the time I resisted, which perhaps turned out to be a bad idea because This time they had a 3 for 2. So instead of one or maybe two inks and a pen, I ended up with 3 pens, and 3 inks to fill them, plus an extra ink for a pen I'd just emptied of black. You have permission to judge my impulse control LOL. 

Above is my frivolous little haul.

And here is the final colour+ pen decisions I went with, including switching around some I had already. I spent literally all day assigning inks to pens, including mixing a slightly darker yellow. When I was nearly done I looked at my water which was a lovely yellowy sap green and was like... In Theory I can make that colour with the inks I have.

So I spent even longer mixing inks to make that beautiful green. I got those diamine inks ages ago with the intention of getting some basics so I could mix and use with a glass dip pen, unfortunately I was too afraid to use it because I'm the clumsiest person I know.

Also! I'm very happy with the blue I got especially, because the Sailor blue I got earlier this year was one I was hoping would match my favourite blue (pastely cornflowery blue-purple) and honestly it was more…just a normal bright blue. Second time lucky though! Milky ocean is lovely, it’s tough to get it to scan as pretty as it is irl, but I love it.

The inks I bought were kind of mid-priced, like £10-15, but I was compelled to buy the ferris wheel press ink because it just looked SO pretty, which was £25(!!) and it is SO bad to write with out of the bottle, I added some washing up liquid to my cartridge, which has fixed the dry ass flow, but man. Man. Do better, Ferris Wheel Press...

*I have since bought some flow aid, don't judge me for my poor choices.

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Ok art supply ramble over!

I went on another unplanned giant walk, setting off with the intention of just going for 20 mins and not taking any water. Ofc I found myself walking for two hours and picked some blackberries and plums on the way for the liquid 😅.

I made it to a pub for a drink in the end! It was nice to walk without my art supplies though, I often feel compelled to draw, like I'm wasting the views if I don't, but that's not true lol.

Also I saw my first giant hogweed! I thought it would be hard to tell the difference at a glance between the smaller less toxic cow parsnip and the giant hogweed (which gives nasty burns and blisters) anyway they were fucking massive, like 10 foot and the flower tops were like the length of my arm. Scary. You can see the tiny cow parsnip underneath! They’re all dead now, I wanna come back next spring to see them if they’re still there.
I'm pretty sure I've gotten a photosensitive burn from the regular mini ones b4 though, that lasted months + itched in the sun, so I don't recommend touching either.

Gaze upon my magnificent hazelnut haul, our tiny hazel bush/hedge section was working overtime this year, I cannot believe how many it made (2 tubs!).  I also got permission to get them from a hedge belonging to the farmers, so I'm very rich in nuts. Tbh there's a lot of things like this where I'm like…am I doing this more for whimsy and aesthetics than anything else? But eh, a little romanticising is good for the soul I think.

Also, free nuts.

plein air roundup!

I really love that first one, something about long shadows and trees, mm.

These last two were done on actual pastel paper and...it was really good... alas... I don't know if I can go back. It held the pastel way better, and didn't scrape off so easily when I layered. I really like the left one here, I wanted it to be kind of abstract, and I want to lean into that I think!

I love this time of year for the crazy sunsets, the forest gets this gold glow almost like its on fire. I gotta try and capture it en plein air, I didn't manage last year, its such a narrow window and I never quite got there at the right time.

The clouds this day blew my mind, I didn't have my pastels with me, but I got some amazing photos.

Honestly this last one makes me so emotional, it has so much movement in it that it kinda feels like it transports me back to that spot, I really do need to sit and draw from photos next time, I have so many beautiful photos.

Thank you for reading, if you made it here! And thank you for the support, I am forever grateful <3. See you next time!