A new challenge for June

After my disaster with The100Project (I probably lasted less than 10 days altogether), I'm foolish enough to embark on another daily challenge. The 30x30 Direct Watercolour challenge, hosted by Marc Taro Holmes of Citizen Sketcher. 30 days of daily direct watercolour painting. Direct simply means that you don't use a pen or pencil to draw your subject first, before adding watercolour, but instead just paint directly with watercolours. Although, if you need a little bit of help from a pencil first, that's okay too. There's a very lively Facebook group with lots of info and helpful tips, and where you can share your paintings. And it starts today, so there's still time to join :)

So far, if I attempted any kind of daily challenge (and there haven't been many), I usually chose a medium that allowed me to easily work on it during the day, such as 5 minutes during my lunch break at work. In other words, mediums like pen and pencil, and no paints. This challenge means, I will have to do it in the evenings on work days. And that will definitely be a challenge. But then again, my main goal isn't the number but the practice. What I want to do is to practise watercolour, as often as possible. Every day would be great, but if I miss one or more days, that's fine too.

I love watercolour, but I'm still struggling with it, a lot. The amount of water to use, the different techniques, which brushes... And that's why I'm going to try and attempt this challenge. It's a good motivation for practising, and as we all know, practice makes progress. (I read that somewhere a while ago, and liked it much better than the more common version. Perfectionism certainly isn't doing me much good...)

The above sketches are just warm ups, I haven't done the first one for today yet, that'll be my plan for tonight. I've also been busy playing with my watercolour pencils. I went through all my art supplies and got out all the pencils I have (and I've made lots of colour charts, which I will share another time). Watercolour pencils really are a very clever medium. They allow you to draw your subject very carefully, if you want, and when you add water, all the lines disappear and what you're left with is a vibrant watercolour painting. But of course not very appropriate for this particular challenge... As with watercolour paints, you can layer the pencils, but I soon found out that in my non-watercolour-paper sketchbook, that didn't work very well. One or two layers of wet medium is okay, but not more. What works really well, though, is painting a base using watercolour pencils and water, and then add more layers with normal coloured pencils, which gives you vibrant colours and also allows to add more details.

In my watercolour journal, the watercolour pencils work a lot better.

It's also a good exercise to draw the same subject several times, and by using different mediums, you can really explore it, and compare how they differ and what works better or not so good for you, and when and how.

Supracolor anniversary edition, and a visit to a special place

I prepared a long post for today, but very annoyingly, Blogger has completely messed up my posts. When I wanted to add the finishing touches yesterday, it had disappeared, and instead, I had two identical copies of another draft. I don't know what Blogger has done with my post, and I can't really understand how this could happen. But it certainly is most annoying. I thought that technology is supposed to make our lives easier, but I feel that in the past two or three years, it has just become more and more complicated and annoying, and more expensive. But I better don't get started about it all....

So here's a shorter version of my post for today. In my last post, I talked about the Schmincke limited edition metallics watercolour box, and today, I'm showing you another special edition that I got the other day, the Caran d'Ache Supracolor limited edition anniversary box with 30 new colours.

Actually, I'm not really too fond of limited edition art supplies. But I simply couldn't resist this box. I do love Caran d'Ache products, and living in Switzerland, I grew up with them and have been using them all my life. They are readily available here, and are among one of the very few things that are actually cheaper here than pretty much every where else.

The problem with limited edition art supplies is, well, obviously, that their availability is limited, and once they're gone, they're gone. With something like the Schmincke metallic watercolours, it doesn't bother me too much, because I won't use them much anyway. I bought them just for fun, and I might play around with them occasionally, but I doubt I'd miss them once they're used up. But with other supplies, if something works for me and I like using it, and get used to it, well, I want to be able to buy it again. So basically, if I know that something isn't available, I'd just rather not use it at all. It may well be that the colour charts below are the only time these gorgeous pencils will ever be used.

Actually, I am a bit confused about these. On the box, it says that they are exclusive colours and on the pencils themselves, it says Limited Edition. But on their website, it also says that to celebrate the 30 years of Supracolor, they are "enriching the Supracolor^® Soft colour palette with thirty brand new colours in addition to the 120 existing shades". So maybe it's just this particular box that is limited edition, and the colours will eventually be available? It seems a bit of a shame to create so many new colours and then not actually sell them. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

The lighter ones also work very well on darker backgrounds.

Making these colour charts has inspired me to take out and try my other watercolour pencils again. I like them, and I think they could be really useful for sketching outside, if you don't always want to take a proper watercolour box with you. I like how they come alive once you add water. But I haven't actually used them very much, so I'm now trying to get the hang of them.

Last Monday, I got to spend the morning at one of my favourite places, a nearby park famous for its rhododendrons and azaleas. A truly gorgeous, peaceful and tranquil place. Well, until lunchtime, when the masses started to arrive. I've never seen so many people queuing at the entrance when I left. But then it was a public holiday, and the first day of really fine weather in quite a while. There used to be a decent connection but unfortunately, they changed the bus time tables a while ago, which now makes getting there by public transport a real pain in the neck (1 hr 10 minutes, whereof 45 minutes is just waiting for connections, vs 15 minutes by car), otherwise I would go there much more often.

Just practising

Thank you everyone who commented and shared their views on blogging on my last post. I am glad that there are still many of us out there, who value blogs and are continuing blogging.

I've been busy these past few weeks mainly practising in my sketchbook. As I've mentioned earlier, I'm exploring botanical art at the moment and I'm taking a class to learning more about it. At the moment, it's all about drawing and graphite. I enjoyed drawing the tone scales, I never really quite realised how much difference there is between different brands. I always sort of assumed that an HB pencil was an HB pencil. Well, it isn't. My favourite brand is the classic Faber Castell 9000. This is also the lightest of the ones I tried out and it gives a good variation of tone. Caran d'Ache Grafwood and Staedtler Mars Lumograph are nice too. The Derwent Graphic I didn't really like. They were almost impossible to sharpen. For botanical drawing, you need a super sharp point. Often this is achieved by sharpening your pencils using a craft knife to cut away the wood, and sand paper to get a really long and pointed point. Here I used a new sharpener by M+R, which sharpens the pencil to a concave point. It sharpened the Faber Castells to a lovely point, the Grafwood are too big for the sharpener, the Mars Lumographs were okay too. But with the Graphics, the leads just kept breaking off. It was okay for the 2H, H and F, but for the rest, it was pretty much impossible. I have a few of those pencils, and I'll use them for other drawings, but definitely not for botanical drawing. Taking the time to make these tonal strips is certainly a very good way to getting to know your pencils - and finding your favourites!

I'm also practicing leaf drawing. And I still have a lot of practising to do! i have to admit that I became a bit sloppy with this one and the result is a very irregular drwaing. But it will be useful as a measure for my progress. In traditional botanical darwing, the subjects are drawn in actual size, which can be rather tricky. It's amazing how much detail there is in a leaf! A magnifying glass is quite essential, not only for getting a closer look at the leaf, but also for drawing. Drawing through a magnifiying glass is actually quite amazing! Especially when you look at your drawing afterwards and see the even layers that you would have had difficulties to achieve with the naked eye.
I started a new leaf but only got as far as the outline. Which means I now have to start all over again. That's the problem with leafs. You have to work relatively quick, as they wilt, some faster than others. Or maybe that's the advantage of drawing leaves. Once you've started, you have to keep going. No room for procrastination.

I also started working through Sue Vize's book Botanical Drawing Using Graphite and Coloured Pencils. I love the good old pencil, and am discovering the potential of coloured pencils. I wasn't aware how much you can actually mix colours by layering them. The colour wheel was done using just three colours, Cadmium Yellow, Ultramarin Blue and Alizarin Crimson.

There's lots of exercises in the book with both graphite and coloured pencils. They're a useful way to pracise your drawing skills as well as getting to know your tools. There are of course exercises in actual botanical art as well, I just haven't got so far yet.

Last weekend, there was a Medial Market here in Zürich, and my Mum and me went to have a look around. It was very nicely done, with a great mix of stalls selling hand made goods, food and entertainment, and wonderful costumes. It wasn't quite as hot as it is now yet, but I still wouldn't have wanted to wear some of those costumes, they look so hot!

The guards at the main entrance to the market - very popular with the Asian tourists...

The Medicus demonstrating is skills

The knights in their best plumes

Quackery and amber

Modern Middle Ages

The basket maker

The big blue teapot

This is my big blue teapot. It really is quite a big pot, and I haven't used in about 15 years. I bought it when I spent a year studying in Stockholm. Me and my friends used to spend a lot of evenings together, and whenever we met up in my room, I used this pot to make tea for us. So it has huge sentimental value, and that's why I've been hanging on to it. For 15 years. But I never use it, and I've been doing a lot of clearing out in my home, and I've decided that it's time to let it go. But before it goes to the second hand shop, I'm drawing and painting it with different mediums, so I'll still always have it with me, in my sketchbooks. The first one was done in oils. I intended to work some more on it once this first layer was dry, but now I think I'll leave it like this, as a sketch.

For the second one I used coloured pencils, in my Hahnemühle D&S sketchbook that I just finished. It has great paper for dry medium, and I enjoyed working in it, trying out different mediums. But I have to admit I did miss being able to use watercolours.

I started a new sketchbook this week. I'm back to a Seawhite one, the same that I used before the Hahnemühle. The paper takes watercolour well enough to serve as an alround sketchbook, but what I really like about it is, that it quite thin. It only has about 45 pages, which makes it about half as thick as the Stillman and Birns, and about a quarter of the Hahnemühle. With all the notebooks, journals, sketchbooks, books and various pencases I've been carrying around lately, my rucksack has become ridiculously heavy, and as consquence, my shoulder has been aching like mad again. So this thinner, lighter sketchbook comes in very handy.

And after all this blue, here's a bit more colour. I found this Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook, that I started in 2014, but only filled four double pages. It's about time to finish it. I just grabbed the first pen that was lying on my desk, a lovely fountain pen filled with brown ink, which I thought was Noodler's Brown, a water resistant ink. As it turned out, it wasn't, but instead a water soluble ink, which created a bit of a mess. Or an interested effect, if you choose to look at it in a more positive way. The radishes were delicious anyway.

A little face-a-day challenge

I've been wanting to do a little face-a-day challenge for ages, but then always somehow forgot about it. But then, last week, after drawing a quick face in my sketchbook in my lunch break at work, I decided to start it there and then. At least one face a day, for about a month, until December 22, which is when N will be coming, and the last day before my 2 weeks' Christmas holiday.

What better way to use all those pens and pencils in your pencil case, really get to know those pens you've been carrying around with you and never really use. I ordered a Sailor calligraphy pen a while ago, one of those fountain pens with a bent nib, and I'm really enjoying it. It was about time I started using it! Different mediums, different styles - just playing around, filling your sketchbook pages and getting lots of practice.

And last but not least...

This week, December 1 - 7, is Crohn's and Colitis Awareness Week.
Ulcerative colitis and Crohn's Disease are the two main forms of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), chronic conditions where the immune system attacks the bowels. It can have devastating effects on people's lives, and for most, it means lifelong medication and recurrent phases of pain and other effects, as well as having to cope with shame and lack of understanding attached to an invisible illness that affects the taboo digestive system. The number of people being diagnosed with IBD is rising, among them more and more children, and so far, there is no cure for it.

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.

Some food sketching, and learning how to paint skies

I was really looking forward to this week's Sketchbook Skool class with Matthew Midgley on drawing food. I didn't know Matthew and his work before the class, I have to admit, but I totally enjoyed it, and it certainly inspired me to try and draw some food. I love fennel, and cook it a lot, so there's usually some in my fridge. 

I'm trying out different sketchbooks to find one that works well for me. The first one is a Seawhite A5 hardcover sketchbook with 140gsm all-media cartridge paper, the second one a Moleskine watercolour sketchbook with heavy watercolour paper. The Seawhite does take the watercolour well enough, but as with other brands of sketchbooks, it's just not the same as proper watercolour paper. So I think it's nice to have both. Even if it means carrying around even more stuff.

Following Matthew's example, I tried to sketch some cooked food before eating it. I fried an egg, and this time used two different mediums, watercolour and coloured pencil, in the same sketchbook. The sketching was more enjoyable than my cold fried egg for dinner, that's for sure.

After sketching the fennel and eggs, I wanted to draw a whole meal too, and this week's weekly special at the canteen - hamburger - was just perfect. I have to admit, though, that I didn't draw it there and then, but instead took a photo of it. A packed university canteen at lunch time is definitely way out my comfort zone. So after my lunch, I went to find a quiet corner in one of the many buildings on the campus and made an ink sketch from my photo reference, and then added watercolour later at home. But I'm planning to do some 'life sketching' of my food next month, when I'm in England. In a quiet corner of our local Wetherspoon's, at a time when most people are not having lunch...

There are quite a few sketchbook artists that I admire, and of my absolute top favourites is no doubt Shari Blaukopf. I admire her strong shapes and colours, and I was overjoyed when I saw that she was now teaching on Craftsy. One of my goals for this year is to get to grips with watercolour, and I want to do some sketching when I'm on my holiday next month. So I started to work through Shari's Landscape class, working through the first lessons on how to paint different skies. My skies all look a complete mess, but then I'm well aware that it takes a lot more than a handful of sketches to master watercolours. And I enjoyed painting them and learned a lot about what colours to use and about tehcniques and the medium in general. By the end of the course I'll hopefully have finished all four of these sketches, and I'm looking forward to looking back at them in a few weeks/months' time and seeing some progress.

And last but not least, there's a new addition to my palette - Naples yellow. A quite interesting colour, great for mixing muted colours - and as it turns out, useful for skies too.

I used a different scanner for this post. For my last post, I scanned my watercolour pages at work, on one of those big machines. I like how it turns the paper completely white, blending the page into the blog background and making the drawings and sketches pop out. But it doesn't handle watercolour, or coloured pencils, very well, leaving areas of paint out completely and not being able to distinct between two different colors of coloured pencils. The images here were scanned on my own cheap printer/scanner at home. It handles the mediums much better but turn makes the paper look strangely yellow. I usually edit photos in Lightroom, which has an excellent white balance tool, but for these scans I used Photoshop, and I've never been able to find the white balance tool there. Although I'm sure it must be somewhere. I know I should take some time to figure out both Photoshop white balance and the settings on my scanner, but it's just so boring...