A sketchbook filled

On Wednesday, I filled the last page of my current sketchbook. It's such a great feeling to have filled a whole sketchbook. So satisfying. The sketchbook I was using before this one took me well over 2 years to finish. 2+ years, with long stretches of not picking it up at all. Of course it doesn't mean that I didn't do anything at all, but for someone who wants to keep a sketchbook and make drawing and sketching a regular practice, 2+ years to fill a 124 pages (a Stillman & Birn Alpha, 8.5x5.5 landscape, 150gsm) is a looong time. Far too long.

I'm happy to say that it took me a lot less time to finish this one. A bit over 2 months. This one is a Seawhite A5 portrait with 92 pages and 140gsm bright white paper (the creamy colour in the images is caused by the scanner). I'm not so happy with it, it takes watercolour reasonably well, but there's a bit of shadowing when using ink. But I decided to use it anyway, and fill it, and I'm glad I did. Even if it might not make it into the top range of favourite sketchbooks, it served me well, and contains different medias and subjects, holiday sketches, exercises from an online class, lots of palette sketches, lettering, portraits (I'm just discovering the Sktchy app)....

I have a ridiculous (and ever growing, despite of having sworn to not buy any new ones) stack of sketchbooks, am I'm now going to work my way through them, drawing and sketching (almost) daily, and so finding the one(s) I like best. I'm also tired of having sketchbooks lying around that only have the first couple of pages filled, so even if they're not 'perfect', I'm trying to fill them anyway.

This month is also World Watercolour Month, which I discovered quite by chance. The Facebook Group is filling up daily with the most gorgeous watercolours. Very inspiring. But also rather intimidating, if you're still learning to master your watercolours. But then, I'm not a "traditional" watercolourist, for me (as for many other sketchbook keepers), they serve a different purpose, and a lot of my daily drawing and sketching is done during my lunch break, which doesn't leave a lot of time. Like the ice lollies below, which were done in about 10 minutes. As it's getting hotter and hotter again, I thought about turning these into a little series, slurping my way through the ice cream freezers. The ice cream and ice lolly range, unfortunately, is somewhat limited here in Switzerland, but I'm sure I'll find enough to keep me cool and fill some sketchbook pages.

The next sketchbook I'm trying out is a Hahnemühle one. I'll share my first impressions of it next week.

I met some lovely cows on my walk on Monday, they were very friendly and nosy, all coming to the fence to say hello, perfect for taking photos. I think there has to be a cow sketch/drawing/painting coming very soon.