A Peek Inside My Sketchbook
Now that fall is here and the weather is getting cooler, I thought I would snatch up a few of my marigolds that I have growing in my yard and do some sketches before they are all gone. In this post I want to briefly share the process I go through when working in my sketchbook. Recently I have been experimenting with pen and watercolor. I usually start off by sketching the object, in this case the marigold, with pencil and then go overtop the pencil lines with the pen. I then use my kneaded eraser to remove the pencil marks. For this sketch I wanted to have the flowers right in front of me so that I could see all the details.
Here are the materials I used:
- Watercolor sketchbook
- HB drawing pencil & kneaded eraser
- Black Sharpie pen
- DaVinci ussuri sable watercolor brushes size 1, 2 & 4 round.
- Daniel Smith extra fine watercolor paints; Cadmium Red Med. Hue, Hansa Yellow Medium, Cadmium Yellow Light Hue, & Hooker’s Green.
- Paper towels, bowl of warm water & a palette for mixing the paint.
I then jump right in to putting the watercolors on the paper. I started these by getting the paper wet with water only (Wet on Wet) and then added the paint.
Here I only have one layer of paint, and as you can see the colors are pretty light.
I added another paint layer here which helps to deepen the colors.
It just didn’t seem complete without some foliage 
What I love about working in my sketchbook is that it is very laid back and fun! It also gives me great ideas for larger pieces I may want to work on in the future. If you haven’t taken out your sketchbook in awhile, make today the day you start again!