What’s on my drawing board, January 09 2020

This weeks drawing board is dominated by a drawing that’s been on the go for over a year, plus some experiments and design explorations in a variety of sketchbooks.

Top row drawing board

A Moleskine notebook that I use to swatch out any new paints I buy, its really handy to be able to turn to the relevant page of colours for a painting I’m currently working on. At the moment its open on a page of green and brown colour swatches from Winsor & Newton.
A5 size field sketchbook study of gum tree on my local sports oval, I used this sketch as a teaching aid for the Painting & Drawing classes that I run at Beaumaris Art Group, Melbourne.
A concertina card, I made this using a long strip of Fabriano Artistico watercolour paper folded into A6 sections. I made a lino cut stamp of some simple leaves to print out a repetitive design that I could then use as a base to quickly explore some new colour combinations.
Ring bound heavy watercolour paper sketchbook (top right) with a loose watercolour study of oranges, I use this sketchbook to create preliminary sketches for watercolour paintings that I’m planning, using an appropriate weight paper gives me a fairly accurate representation of how my designs may turn out.

Bottom row

Field sketchbook (small Hahnemühle cloth bound book) with an ink and watercolour wash beach scene.
My A4 ring bound working sketchbook with 2 field scene sketches, I’m currently developing some design ideas around the theme of fields, which I want to translate into a variety of different mediums including paint, textiles and even silver jewelry!
An A3 ideas sketchbook, this is a space where I visually capture any ideas I’ve had for new projects, I find it better to illustrate my ideas rather than just write a few words, it helps me remember exactly what I wanted to achieve at the time. This is open at a page where I’m gathering some more inspiration for my field design themes.
Large inked picture of waterside houses at Looe (a fishing village in Cornwall, UK). This has been on and off my drawing board for over a year, its nearly all inked in, I just have the boats in the harbour to complete and I will finish it off with a watercolour wash, using my watercolour paints, at the start of this project I stretched my watercolour paper ground on a board so it wont buckle when I apply the final washes.
Bottom right, my current watercolour palettes, predominantly blues and greens, but with and my new favourite – Burt Sienna these are mainly filled with Art Spectrum Watercolour tube paints.