New sketchbook

After having finished my Seawhite sketchbook, I started a new one straightaway. It's a brand I haven't used before but wanted to try out, as it's available locally. It's a Hahnemühle D&S A5 sketchbook with 140gsm natural white paper. I started with a title page in ink. The ink, I noticed, turned slightly spidery on the page, and when I added some watercolour, well, that didn't work at all. No moving around on the page, the paper just seemed to soak it all up and dry out immediately.

So I had a look at the label again - the D&S stands for "Draft & Sketch" and underneath it states "for pencil and charcoal". No mention of ink, or light wash, as many of the other non-watercolour sketchbooks do. My first thought was that I needed to start another sketchbook, but then I decided to see it as a challenge. To just use pencil and coloured pencils, and whatever other medium would work in this one (I'm always sceptical with using charcoal in a sketchbook because of the fixing. Last time I tried fixing pastels in a journal, I got a bad headache from all the fumes. But boy were those pastels fixed!). For watercolours, I would use the Moleksine watercolour journal that I had already started. The only drawback is that I now have to carry two sketchbooks with me, instead of just one, and my rucksack weighs a ton.

It is fun, tough, to use some mediums again, which I haven't used for a time, or not much yet. Those Magic Pencils work well, and they're great fun. She turned out a bit scary though, I'm afraid.

And of course coloured pencils. I love them, but haven't used them for a while. The cherries on the left were drawn with a Magic Pencil again, on the right I used my Polychromos coloured pencils. I don't think the lettering works very well here, but I wanted to add something to the page and see how pigment pens would work. They work perfectly, I'm happy to say, as you can see below too. I always struggle with proportions, and my subjects usually get too big and cut off.

I'm very happy to say that the paper also takes my beloved ink brush pen very well. So even if I can't use watercolours or my fountain pens in this sketchbook, it still leaves me with plenty of mediums to use, and many of which I probably wouldn't use as often, if at all, otherwise.

I tried my best to not cut the cow's nose off again, and this time, I got it right. This is in my Moleskine. I used one of the photos I took on a walk a couple of weeks ago. I'm always happy to see these cows, unlike so many others, they are allowed to keep their horns, as they should.

Again, most sketches (except the cherries and the pen cow) were done in my lunch break. Taking my sketchbook to work and finding a quiet corner after lunch for a quick sketch has become a habit I look forward to every day. You can always squeeze a drawing in, even if it's just for 5 minutes.