Watercolour in Sketchbooks

Light sketch in pencil with watercolour

Last weekend I was visiting family in Hertfordshire and usually like to take a bunch of flowers as a small token of appreciation.  These irises were all tightly closed but once in a vase, and with the continuing heatwave, they quickly unfurled.  This double page spread was the start of a new sketchbook - always a bit nerve wracking!  The desire for a 'good' start is very strong.  I had to push the thought aside and just concentrate on an observational drawing in pencil.  I focused on clean lines and a few areas of hatching to suggest shading.  Plans were afoot to think about going out for the day so I had time constraints on the watercolour stage - always a help to stop the dreaded 'fiddling'.  I first washed some diluted lemon yellow selectively across the page with the intention of linking the yellow irises to the background.  Once dry I added stronger lemon to petals.  The study continued with blues and violet for the purple iris and bud.  The greens were made with pools of colour from the yellows and blues already used.  The flashes of cadmium yellow were added last.  Look closely and you might be able to detect where I scratched with a fingernail into damp washes to hint at some of the crinkle texture that I could see on some petals.  Doing this invites the pigment to settle darker into the indentations made on the paper. 

Nasturtium - pencil and watercolour in sketchbook

Early evening - sitting outside in the shade - Pimm's in one hand and a pencil in the other!  A long tendril from a nasturtium plant was starting to snake out along the paving slabs and begged to be captured in a sketch with vibrant colour to make it sing.  Careful observation and the complexity of the plant became apparent.  I had to simplify the leaf shapes and almost trust my hand to transcribe what my eye was seeing as it travelled along the stem.  I actually started with the little cluster of pale buds and new baby leaves on the far left and let the composition grow organically as I sketched my way across the pages.  The lighting was flat and even as I sat in the shade, so it left me free to study the local colour of the flowers rather than the colour as it was affected by light and shadow.  Made my task easier anyway.  Again I wanted to get rid of the white of the page so started with loose passages of diluted watercolour, some lemon yellow and some cadmium red.  The greens were a combination of lemon yellow and cerulean blue and on the main stem cadmium red was added to this mix to tone it down a bit.  The petals were also of the 'crinkly' variety so some more scratching with a fingernail created dark linear marks into the damp washes of cadmium red and lemon yellow.  The paints I use are all Winsor and Newton Artists Watercolour - with tube colour squeezed into the wells of a small circular folding palette that I have had for years.

Pen and wash

  
Well, the caption beneath this final sketchbook spread is pen and wash but actually it started out as purely watercolour.  My mum and I had strolled around the ruins of Verulamium in St. Albans and sat on a rustic bench to admire the view.  My eye was actually drawn across the ruins and the valley to the hillside beyond as we had quite a high viewpoint.  I didn't want to be long but so decided to use watercolour for a loose impression of the fields, trees and hedge lines.  However once I stopped to assess what was happening on the page I felt I was getting a bit lost and muddled.  So out came the Edding profipen 0.7 to the rescue... as the saying goes "where there's a will, there's a way".

This new sketchbook is a black hardcover Goldline with a spine,  15 x 21cms (approx. 6" x 8").  The pages are not designed for watercolour but are heavyweight enough to cope with it.  Like my last sketchbook (Seawhite of Brighton) I shall probably prime some pages with a layer of gesso, tinting some of the gesso coloured with acrylic.  This makes an attractive matt surface with hint of multidirectional brushstroke texture - again a ploy to remind me not to be too precious about any drawing or painting, to just enjoy the process and being 'in the moment'.

I encourage you to get together a few supplies and try to make the most of those moments where you can pause and spend time looking.  Recording these between the pages of a sketchbook is so satisfying and can only be of benefit when returning to make more considered work in the studio.