Birthday charms

Ink pen and watercolour in Windsor and Newton sketchbook

Ink pen and brush marker in small Moleskine sketchbook.

Bracelet in same position, same viewing angle, different sketchbook. I think I've made A. look too old... 

A stab at architecture

Brush markers in small Moleskine sketchbook

I thought I'd have a stab at architecture today - always the hardest for me. I should have paid more attention in those perspective classes. This church is in a beautiful nearby village, sketched in before my podiatry appointment, and some of the colour added at home from a photo that I took for that  purpose.

Adaptation

Brush markers and pencil in Windsor and Newton sketchbook.

rearranged for a photo ... and then 

Brush markers in small Moleskine sketchbook.


I was always a city person, and I could never keep a pot plant alive, hated the darn things. But I'm a changed, and fully adapted humanoid. Now not only do I love living in the countryside, I also can't stop going into – and drawing – the garden. It's village fêtes next, I tremble to think. This morning it rained hard and I drew the cut flowers in the vases around the house... but the drawings look too coy. When the weather cleared up for a while, I went out, everything glistening with drops, the heady smell of wet soil. The small Moleskine sketchbook is fantastic because so light to hold, and I just love the way the brush markers glide over the beautiful vellumy pages. 

Garden, cool day

Brush markers in Moleskine sketchbook.

Two drawings done at the bottom of the garden - in the second, playing with reversing the colours. 

Five minutes, rainy day

Brush markers on gouache wash in big sketchbook.


Blissfully fresh, rainy day, the sky bruised and brooding and the air marvellously cool. Why do I know this isn't everyone's idea of a beautiful June day?

In the garden

I never imagined I'd get so enamoured of the garden, fascinated by the daily changes, the way one lot of blooms dies off to give rise to another – all of it unplanned of course – so that the palette is constantly in flux. I'm drawn daily, so to speak, to sitting on the ground (sometimes on a towel if the grass is wet) with a sketchbook. Dog likes to keep me company and sometimes help.

Ink pen and brush markers in small Moleskine sketchbook.

Early morning, nodding rose

Pencil, pencil crayon and watercolour in Windsor and Newton sketchbook.

I can't resist this

These are definitely not drawings. But I can't resist including them: in our garden, the last tulip and the first open rose, both taken today. 

Rough experiment

Pond

Rose and flowering chestnut

Acrylic paint and brush markers in Windsor and Newton sketchbook.

Following on yesterday's accidental experiment with gouache, I painted two sketchbook spreads with acrylic, the green one opaque, the sand-coloured one watery, but a little more substantial than a wash. The acrylic seals off the layer and makes it a bit resistant to the brush markers, which are anyhow a pretty rough tool. Makes for boldness rather than accuracy or delicacy. 

One thing after another

Brush markers and gouache in Windsor and Newton sketchbook.

I spilt some gouache on the page in my studio and tried to turn it to my advantage by roughly colouring the whole page and then drawing on top of this ground. There is always something disinhibiting about a ground that is already messy, where the pristine page can sometimes be daunting.

I am always intrigued, in looking at other people's sketchbooks, at signs of continuity or discontinuity, how one page follows another. Often, there will be something akin to an evolution, where a certain approach or material is used for a stretch of time and produces certain stylistic and technical results, then giving way to another. My sketchbooks never seem to record a continuous line of progress. I find myself chopping and changing a lot. If I've been working with brush markers for a few days, I want to go back to ink pen or to pencil crayon, or pencil and watercolour; more careful, delicate drawings follow rougher, more expressionistic or scribbly ones. For me, the sketchbook is as much about material experimentation as it is about observational drawing.