I finished a sketchbook! It only took 6 years! (lol!)

A Sketchbook Flip-Through of Notes and Practice from Two Workshops, 2014-2020

I took a couple of art workshops in 2014 and 2015 and put my notes and drawings into a sketchbook. One workshop was online with urban sketcher Liz Steel and her Foundations class which I highly recommend. The other was a sketching nature workshop with Charlene Freeman held locally.

When I take workshops, I like to copy notes from the class into my sketchbooks and I try to draw every image (except photographs) that may be in the handouts as well as try to do all the suggested exercises from class. Most of the drawings are ink and watercolor. Some are graphite only. I finished the Foundations class in 2015 but the nature workshop had images that I left to finish later. Much later. I have drawings in here dated from 2016, 2017 and then 2020. So this sketchbook was mostly but not all done for years. I’m glad that I finally have finished it!

Here’s a link to see a flip-through of the sketchbook:

A Sketchbook Flip-Through of Notes and Practice from Two Workshops, 2014-2020

The music in the video is Saturday Coffee by William Claeson.

Recently I took an online course with Australian sketchbook artist and former architect, Liz Steel with her SketchingNow Watercolours course. She is an amazing artist and a very good instructor. I highly recommend her! I've taken several of her online courses and first came across her as an instructor in Sketchbook Skool, another source of great sketchbook courses online.

Liz led us through a variety of exercises with our watercolors to become more familiar with what our particular paints would do and things to consider when painting on location. One of the lessons was about mixing colors and the benefits of knowing certain combinations of color mixes before going on location so that when that kind of combination was needed it would be easy to mix rather than guessing. She suggested that we make a color mix chart of the paints in our palettes but it wasn't a requirement for the course since it does take a long time to do. However, I find making color charts a lot of fun and rather meditative, so here is my color mix chart of my current travel palette.

My paints are a combination of Daniel Smith (DS), Winsor & Newton (WN), Holbein, Schmincke and Sennelier.