Clear Skies Continue

 

1/23/26 Maple Leaf Park (Museum Aquarelle pencils, Inktense Blocks)

While much of the country is buried under snow with frigid temps, we continue to enjoy miraculously beautiful weather. Cold, yes, but clear skies that just won’t quit. I am soaking in as much as I can before the more typical rain returns (which I see in the long-range forecast). On a walk around Maple Leaf Park, I stopped briefly on one of those lovely afternoons.

Process notes: One of few things I value about Facebook (which I’m otherwise skeptical about) is the daily Memories section that shows me everything I posted on that date in prior years. An interesting pattern I see every winter is the experimenting I do from reference photos, usually related to color. I went through a period of exploring the Zorn palette, especially with portraits, and using an “underpainting” with various media. I’ve explored primary and secondary triads year-round, and I’ve made concerted efforts to study color temperature both formally (in Sarah Bixler’s classes) and informally.

Practicing at home with reference photos is one thing, but the true test of anything I study is whether I can apply it in the field. Some things “stick,” while others don’t. Or maybe it’s more a matter of how well using certain color principles fits with all the additional constraints of sketching on location. It’s easy to study color and concepts in the comfort of home! On the sidewalk with wind, rain, heat, cold, traffic, pedestrians or other distractions? Not so much.

My current use of a limited palette guided by values seems to be a good balance between a principle I understand (values) and something I want to push myself to explore (not being matchy-matchy with hues).

Gouache: Mind Blown Backward and Inside-Out

 

7/30/25 Elliott Bay beach (gouache in Stillman & Birn Delta sketchbook)

After taking several colored pencil workshops with Sarah Bixler to learn her fascinating take on color temperature, I got brave and plunged into a totally new medium: gouache!

Sarah's workshop met at a strip of beach on Elliott Bay, where
I learned to balance my palette, sketchbook, water cup, and butt on a handy
but uncomfortable log. Only the five paints in my CMYK set are in the palette
(the rest are watercolors).

Oh, sure, I’ve dipped into pink gouache during cherry blossom season, and we’ve all used touches of white gouache for snow or highlights. But making an entire, full-on painting with nothing but gouache was completely new territory for me. And because I prefer to plunge into the deep end before sticking my toe in the water, I took Sarah’s plein air workshop so that I could struggle with all the usual challenges of being on location (on this day, it was heat, humidity and sitting on a log) while also learning a new medium. Yay for tough art love!

A color-mixing study in which we make an arrangement of 
squares and rectangles indicating the percentage of a
particular hue we might use in the composition. Without
trying to make the actual composition, we can see how the hues
might play against each other.

Although I’m certainly no pro at watercolors, I’ve used them enough to know that gouache is basically the opposite in every way. They both squeeze out of tubes to make you think they are similar, but their similarities end there. When watercolors are glazed, their transparency allows the previous colors to show through, resulting in optical mixing. Colored pencils, too, are transparent like watercolors, so I’m used to that kind of layering.

By contrast, gouache is opaque, so succeeding layers completely obscure whatever was underneath (definitely a benefit in many cases, but difficult to wrap my head around). Instead of saving out the white of the paper for the brightest highlights with watercolor, with gouache, you can simply paint the white on last!

The biggest head explosion (or implosion, perhaps, given the backwardness of my perception), however, was in the way shifting values can be achieved: If I’m using a watercolor that turns out to be more vibrant or darker than I want, the simplest way to lighten the hue is to dilute it with more water. With gouache, you don’t add water – you add white! Whaaat!!

Sarah at her demo easel and some classmates.

Even though I understood this in concept, it still took me many (perhaps habitual) dips into the water cup before I learned to dip into the white instead. Once I did, though, what a game changer! I found it much easier to shift the value of a hue one way or the other with the simple addition of white or the hue (or occasionally black). Although Sarah had given us a supply list with a fairly typical palette of basic colors, I chose to bring only five paints to the workshop: the cyan, magenta, yellow, black and white that came in the Holbein primary mixing set I had purchased a couple of years ago. With only the three CMY primaries plus white and black made the job of shifting hues and values much easier than with a full palette.

My painting is a bit of a mess, especially the pile of rocks in the foreground, but as a first painting in a new medium, I’d say it’s not a bad start. I was pleased by the range of muted hues I was able to mix with that basic CMY triad (it helped that I was already familiar with using the CMY triad with colored pencils). The result looks more cohesive than I would probably otherwise achieve.

Elliott Bay beach just below Olympic Sculpture Park

My biggest frustration was how much time it takes to mix the hues and values I’m looking for. Gouache dries so quickly, especially on a hot day, that I was constantly fighting with making the paint fluid enough to apply without adding so much water as to dilute the opacity. As with any wet medium, learning how to hit the right ratio of water to paint is critical to mastering gouache.

But never mind mastery. Sarah’s workshop has whetted my appetite, and I’m looking forward to more stumbling and fumbling with gouache. I might even concede that some studio practice would be helpful before I go full-on urban sketching with gouache.

Color Temperature at Volunteer Park

 

On location at Volunteer Park

In February I took an online class with Sarah Bixler on a topic that has intrigued me ever since I took two workshops with her several years ago: color temperature. In all cases, although she didn’t necessarily describe her classes as having color temperature as the focus, her personal approach to color is so strongly centered that way that it became the focus, regardless of subject matter.

I wasn’t necessarily interested in portraiture or figure drawing, but I tried to learn and understand the concepts so that I could apply them on location. Along the way, I’ve made attempts to do this on my own, but I haven’t feel confident doing it. That’s why I was thrilled when she offered several plein air workshops this summer. I couldn’t sign up fast enough!

Our subject: tree limbs turned into a jungle gym

Meeting at Volunteer Park on a thoroughly overcast afternoon, we lucked out on a comfortable temperature, but the flat lighting seemed less than ideal. Sarah pointed out, though, that while we lacked strong shadows, we had the benefit of seeing local colors more easily without the glare of direct sunlight.

The subject she chose for her demo were the remains of multiple trees that had been arranged in a sculptural-like effect (and used frequently by kids as a jungle gym). Hearing her talk through her thinking process continually as she sketched was highly informative and also gave us opportunities to interrupt with questions. Although her near-abstract approach was identical to how she approaches figures or portraits, seeing subject matter on location somehow felt more “real” and natural to me than even live studio models.

Choosing a relatively muted secondary triad (yellow-green, blue-violet, burnt ochre) that was very different from the palette she used, I sketched the same subject she had demo’d. Although I could have chosen a different subject, I thought it would be a good challenge for myself to think about the interpretations and analysis she had talked through while using my own color choices.

My sketch completed during the workshop. The blending triangle at lower left shows the palette I used. Value thumbnail at lower right.

After focusing on color temperature for my main color application, I tried something on my own: Despite keeping it somewhat abstract, I felt like the tree “sculpture” was unclear as a three-dimensional object, which I might have rendered more fully if I had been using my natural, more descriptive approach. To bring the front-facing branches forward, I added yellow to the palette and applied it sparingly to those branches as well as to the foreground grass. At the same time, I made the background cooler than it appeared to push it back. When Sarah pointed out that the background trees could be a darker value, she suggested Payne’s Grey as a neutral cool, and she was right that it made the background darker without affecting my palette choices.

Due to her approach and technique, my result is more abstract than I am used to making, so it doesn’t feel like my own (though I must say that it was a relief to focus on large shapes and not worry about drawing all those tree limbs accurately). But I’m very happy with the optical blending I achieved with dry colored pencils; I really like the “pixelated” effect on this toothy Canson XL mixed media paper I used. And I especially appreciated the opportunity to finally apply her approach to color in the field with her feedback.

Pencil notes: From my previous experience in Sarah’s classes, I knew she recommended Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils. But to make the process my own as I would use it on location, I had to use watercolor pencils, even in their dry state, because my favorite Caran d’Ache Museum Aquarelles (extremely soft) blend very differently than Polychromos (extremely hard). This was probably the largest (5-by-7 inches or so) sketch I’ve done with Museum Aquarelles completely dry, and it was delightful to really push their softness to cover the entire composition (which I rarely do even with small sketches). I’m thinking that Caran d’Ache Neocolor II water-soluble crayons would also lend themselves well to this technique and approach.

After scanning the image as completed in the workshop (above), I applied a tiny bit of water to the darkest areas of the background to bring the foreground object further forward (below). It was hard being so restrained with water activation, but I didn’t want to lose the optical blending effect that appeals to me so much with this approach. (See captions for more notes.)

7/9/25 Volunteer Park (After I got home, I added a very restrained amount of water only to the darkest areas of the background to further help push the focal point forward in the composition.)

Warm palette. Instead of using Sarah's recommended Polychromos pencils, I picked out pencils from the Museum Aquarelle palette to match her color suggestions as closely as possible. It's fairly close to my typical daily-carry palette.

Cool palette 

I couldn't resist snapping this pic of Sarah's disorganized, grubby and well-used pencils! I love seeing pencils that look hard-working, while my own look lazy and pristine in their tidy case (above). I can't help being tidy, but a part of me wishes I weren't.

Plum Color Temperature Study

 

4/22/25 Maple Leaf neighborhood

Now that I’m past the excitement of pink petal peeping and sketching, I want to get back to studying color temperature. Specifically, I want to apply what I learned in Sarah Bixler’s class to sketching in the real world, on location. With all those cherry trees I sketched, I found that I was too enamored with the subject matter to focus on study, which requires a different kind of concentration. It’s actually easier to study color temperature with a “nothing” scene.

These are the same ornamental plum trees I became obsessed with several years ago as I tried to find the right color mixes to capture the reddish-purple, nearly black hue of their foliage. During that first pandemic summer, this dead-end street between Maple Leaf and Green Lake became my favorite safe and easy place to study this confounding color.

In this photo, the grassy areas look blown out and overly warm;
in reality, the fence looked warmer.

With a limited palette (yellow, red, purple, blue) and nothing tricky to draw, I could see the whole scene abstractly in the same way my classmates and I practiced color temperature concepts on portrait skin tones. The warmest spot was the fence toward the left. Other than the sky, which I decided not to color, the coolest area was the broad freeway barrier wall in the background (in reality, a dark gray; I mixed all four colors). Everything else was somewhere in between. I considered mixing a very warm green for the grass, but instead I just added a bit of yellow to the purple shadows only where the trees’ cast shadows hit the grass. I left the street shadows straight purple.



Now that it’s finally warming up a bit, I intend to do more of these studies on my walks.

Pushed Indoors Again in Columbia City

3/12/25 Empire Roasters & Records, Columbia City

Déjà vu: I recalled a USk Seattle outing in Columbia City way back in 2016 when heavy rain and wind pushed us all indoors. It wasn’t quite that bad on Wednesday, but it was definitely wet enough for our small group to retreat indoors.

Mary Jean and I decided on Empire Roasters and Records, where I had sketched with Roy and Kate just about a year ago. It’s a funky space combining a café and record store on three narrow floors. As I did last time, I admired all the furniture made from wood that still retained the raw edges, cracks and holes of the trees it came from.

I started with my current obsession: A color temperature study of the interior I faced. Using the tricks that seem to work best for me in Sarah Bixler’s class, which I had just finished, I looked for the warmest spots (the man’s face and the yellow painting on the wall) and the coolest area (his shirt). I noted that the light coming in through the window was on the cool side. From there, I just kept asking and comparing, Is this cooler or warmer than…? Eventually I want to bust out of this blue/orange (plus a little yellow) palette, but for now, it’s working for me as a learning tool. (I added the ceiling lamp at the library right before we had our throwdown.)

That done, I could relax and make a comics diary page to commend myself for unpacking my drawing table and filling my sketchbook bookcase (below).

It’s a shame that we couldn’t sketch outdoors because the Columbia City neighborhood is full of old architecture and fun business street fronts. But I was happy to have a comfy opportunity to work out color temperature concepts in a real-life location, not just a portrait from a photo. 

Cool Light/Warm Shadow = Brain Buster

 

3/10/25 Both exercises done with Prismacolors
in Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook

Unattributed reference photo

The final assignment in Sarah Bixler’s class was to use reference photos with relatively cool light and warm shadows, which is the reverse of how I usually see and interpret light/shadow. For the first one (above), I used the same reference photo (unattributed) that Sarah had used in her demo.

Per her suggestion, I kept the lighted side fairly saturated while the shaded side was more of a mix of warm/cool and therefore less saturated. While Sarah explained her interpretation and logic as she demo’d, what she said made sense. But when I tried to do it myself, I got confused and befuddled! The light didn’t seem cool at all, nor did the shadow side seem particularly warm.

Feeling frustrated that I didn’t do it right, I tried again, this time with an Earthsworld reference photo (below). I deliberately chose one with a warm shadow side enhanced by a warm light under his chin reflected from his yellow shirt. To avoid the repeat of my confusion, I took a more mechanical approach that had worked for me previously: I determined that the warmest area was under his chin. Relative to that, everything else on his face was cooler. Though my approach feels mechanical, I think the second one’s result is much better. More important, I felt more solidly that I “get it,” even when the logical warm light/cool shadow is reversed.

3/11/25

Earthsworld reference photo

Whew! I took her class because of the brain blowouts I had gotten during her previous workshops . . . and this time, the blowouts continued, all the way to the end! One thing is for sure: I cannot unsee what I have learned to see about color temperature! Portraiture from photos is all fine and good for learning concepts, but we all know what I really want to do: Practice what I’ve learned out in the real world!

Ramping Up Color Temperature (Plus Thoughts on Colored Pencils)

 

3/1/25 Rainbow of hues without crossing the color wheel
(all exercises done with Prismacolors in Stillman & Birn
Zeta sketchbook; same Earthsworld reference photo for all)

Week 4’s assignments in Sarah Bixler’s class extended the palette to primary triads and a full rainbow. For the rainbow exercise, we were instructed to avoid blending “across the color wheel” (to create neutrals) and instead maintain fully saturated hues as much as possible, blending only analogously. The result would enable us to demonstrate our understanding of color temperature without neutrals muddying things up. Although the resulting portrait is wacky looking (at left), it certainly was effective in forcing me not to fudge!

For the other two portraits, we were to use a traditional painter’s primary triad and what Sarah calls a printer’s primary triad (what I refer to as CYMK). These were much easier for me because of all the primary triads I had played with a few years ago (and still find fascinating to explore).

3/2/25 printer's primary triad (CYMK)

On one of them, we could add a warm neutral and a cool neutral to help with values if needed (below). I thought the latter additions would be helpful, but in practice, I regretting losing the clarity of the triad hues.

3/3/25 painter's traditional primary triad with addition of indigo and
burnt sienna as cool/warm neutrals

Why use colored pencils?

During a class discussion, one student, a painter, asked sort of a devil’s advocate question: Why use colored pencils instead of paint? Sarah’s response was especially interesting to me as both a colored pencil geek and an urban sketcher: Initially she had started using colored pencils because she was looking for a portable medium that she could use when she was out biking or hiking and wanted to stop for a quick plein air study.

The more she used them, however, the more she realized that colored pencils had unique properties that paint did not. With paints, she can mix any color she wants, but the more she mixes, the less her original chosen palette is apparent. Colored pencils make it easier for her to see how each color addition affects how she perceives the other hues. Because transparent pencils mix optically and can’t blend completely as paint can, they won’t lose their original color identity.

She also finds that because the earlier marks cannot be completely obscured by later layers, she has more opportunity to push toward abstraction. “A nice wonky abstraction is possible,” Sarah said. She enjoys the clear, directional marks that pencils make.

Her comments validated many thoughts I’ve had myself but haven’t always articulated about why colored pencils are a unique, compelling medium.

Temperature Study at PCC

 

2/23/25 PCC Green Lake (color temperature study)

Ching, Natalie and I got together for lunch and a play date at PCC Green Lake. The view from the café area is extremely blah, even by my low standards, but you know me – I’m always up for a challenge (especially with good company). My self-challenge of the day: Use the same color temperature principles I’m learning in Sarah Bixler’s class on location.

Facing the windows, the view was slightly better than the salad bar behind me. The seated woman left shortly after I started the sketch, but not before I had quickly blocked in the color temperatures. When another woman took her place, I knew the values would be the same, so it was easy to put those in even though the original woman was gone. It was another good reason to focus on color first before values, per Sarah’s recommendations.

This murky, hazy style that we are using in class for portraits is sort of the opposite of my hard-line comics style with markers that I’ve been using for a while, so it’s quite a leap for me. I’m not sure I like it, but I’m using it to nail down the concepts in my brain. Ultimately, I want to find a way to integrate what I’m learning with my own style.

Temperature Before Values

 

2/21/25 Prismacolors in Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook
(The triangle at the bottom is one way to mix three hues
to see the range of neutral shades available.)

The assignments in Sarah Bixler’s class last week were a fascinating exploration of values and color temperature. First, we were to make a values study of a face using colored tape in a collage-like way (see below). When I had taken her class previously, we did a similar exercise, so the concept wasn’t new to me, but I remember how much fun it was – and informative. 

And it was again! Tape, especially without using scissors to cut small pieces, is a crude medium, so it’s impossible to get fussy with details. In addition, the tape is straight, so you get angles instead of curves. It’s liberating to focus only on values and not have to look at proportions, features or anything else.

Using the collage as a reminder of values, I used the same reference photo to draw a portrait. She suggested we choose one warm and one cool (I chose orange and green) to establish the main color temperatures. Once the temperatures were blocked in at about the same middle value, we were to choose a third color fairly close on the color wheel to one of the other two chosen colors (I chose blue). The third color would push the other hues in the appropriate temperature direction.

Values study made with tape -- fun!

One big question I had from the previous week’s exercises was how to see color temperature independent of values. Despite the orange and blue I had chosen for those exercises being about the same values, I kept thinking of blue as “darker,” so I’d use it to apply darker values without paying attention to whether those areas were actually cooler. Sarah answered my question by saying she almost always establishes color temperature first before focusing on values. This was a bit of a mind-blower, as I’ve heard most instructors say the opposite – always establishing values first before color. I followed her suggestion for this exercise, however, and it definitely made it easier for me to avoid confusion between value and temperature.

Color Temperature: Clicking into Place?

 

2/15/25 orange/blue only
(all exercises done with Prismacolors in Stillman &Birn Zeta sketchbook)

In the second session of Sarah Bixler’s class, Sarah gave us a lengthy demo of her portraiture style using color temperature as the focus. As I had felt in her earlier workshops, I’m both intrigued and perplexed at the same time, and I jumped into the homework eagerly.

Two challenges collided: The first was the same as in the initial exercise (when we focused only on values by using black) – the difficulty of “painting” only the abstract value shapes instead of rendering with a contour line. The second challenge was simultaneously paying attention to color temperature and its relativity.

Assigned to draw three portraits using reference images of our choice, I went to my favorite portrait go-to, Earthsworld, for two. For the first (at right), we were to use only orange and blue for the color temperature range. The gradient under the portrait shows the range from warm (pure orange) to cool (pure blue) and everything in between. The middle of the gradient bar should be close to a neutral gray.

A trick I used was to first identify the coolest area (his shirt) and the warmest areas (the sunlit side of his face near the highlight) and make those pure blue and pure orange. From there, as I moved around the drawing, I kept asking, Is this spot warmer than the shirt? Cooler than the sunlit side of his face? I’m not sure whether she would recommend this tactic, but it seemed to help me.

For the second exercise, we were to begin with brown (warm) and black (cool) to establish values first. After that was done, we added orange and blue to indicate temperature more clearly. This version was easier for me because I could look at values without confusing the issue with hue (below). I remembered to take a photo right after I made the initial block-in of “value shapes” – so challenging without drawing a contour line! But it does help to hold the pencil loosely and use the broad side of the point so that color goes on as widely as possible – like paint.

"Value shapes" during initial block-in

2/16/25 Brown/black used first to establish values

The last exercise (below) – similar to the first except using burnt ochre (warm) and peacock green (cool) – I had to laugh through most of it! Sarah had suggested using a selfie for one, so I chose a very unflattering, harshly lighted photo with a three-quarter view that I find especially daunting. I actually thought the unflattering photo might help me to abstract the shapes more easily! HA! I’ll tell you what was helpful, though: For the initial block-in, I turned the reference photo upside-down!

2/18/25 burnt ochre and peacock green (Brownie points for me
that I even turned this one in!)

Although that last one was painful and humbling, that’s when things started to click into place for me. In the first one, I felt like I was automatically thinking of blue as “darker” than orange and relying on it to darken the values without regard to temperature, which then confused me. As you can see from the gradient bar that I converted to grayscale below, in reality, both orange and blue are about the same value (in fact, the whole gradient is). By the time I got to the selfie, I started “seeing” that darker areas can be warm, and lighter areas can be cool – temperature is not the same as values. Holy heck, am I really starting to get it??

I remember sort of arriving at this point toward the end of her previous workshops, but without more practice and feedback, it felt slippery, and I was never confident that I understood enough to internalize what I learned. I hope that the remaining three classes will help me solidify what feels like I’m just beginning to grasp.

Orange/blue gradient from first exercise converted to grayscale

Color Studies at Suzzallo

 

2/16/25 Red Square and Suzzallo Library, UW campus

Warm, cozy, artistically challenging – Suzzallo Library on the University of Washington campus is a winter mainstay for USk Seattle. If the size of our group last Sunday is any indication, we have high pent-up demand for comfortable sketching opportunities – what a turnout!

While I waited for others to show up at the library entrance, I made a couple of quick sketches of Red Square to set the location (above). Once inside, I wasn’t in the mood to challenge myself with daunting architecture. Instead, I picked one of the elegant pillars flanking the stairway to finish the page.

That done, I spent the rest of the outing pulling out different media to experiment with tone and color temperature (which have been on mind with Sarah Bixler’s class). The small monochrome of Suzzallo’s main reading room entrance (left) was made in the round-robin concertina book I’m sharing with Roy and Mary Jean.

Elsewhere in the library, I found quiet spots to study color temperature using watercolor pencils (below). At lower right, the strong diagonal is one of many internal supports throughout Suzzallo. They look jarring mixed in with the stately Collegiate Gothic Revival architectural style, but it’s reassuring to know that the centenarian building is seismically safe.

Pent-up demand!

Of Course, We Begin with Values

2/8/25 Faber-Castell Polychromos
(all sketches in Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook)

The first assignment in Sarah Bixler’s class was – surprise, surprise – an emphasis on values. Using only gray tones and black, we were to make four master copies of the image from the portrait shown at the end of the post. Sarah encouraged us not to worry about resemblance or even proportions. We were instructed to squint a lot, avoid details, avoid rendering with contour lines, and simply make large shapes of value contrasts. In addition, since most students were experienced painters but new to colored pencils as an art medium, the exercise was an opportunity to become familiar with the medium. (I may be unique among my classmates in that I have little painting experience but expertise in colored pencil geekery!)

2/9/25 Caran d'Ache Luminance

After having spent part of the first class discussing color and getting excited about colored pencils again, you can imagine how frustrating this exercise was for me (and probably all my classmates): We were all using freshly sharpened pencils, yet we were to avoid all detail – and color!

2/9/25 Prismacolor

Of course, I understood the purpose of such an exercise, so I soldiered on, and it was challenging as well as frustrating. To avoid rendering, I tried to shade loosely with my pencil held way up near the wrong end. Sarah equates this pencil method with painting with a palette knife instead of a brush. When doing the latter with oil or acrylics, you slather on paint, then scrape it off with the edge of the knife. Picky, little details are not possible – only large swaths of color. This is part of how we learn to think like a painter, regardless of actual medium. To make it more interesting for myself, I switched out the pencils.

2/10/25 Polychromos

Despite my grumbles, the exercise was low pressure because I wasn’t worried about whether my copies looked anything like the painting (what a mean grump I made this sweet girl into!).

You'd never guess from my studies that they were all from the same reference!

Colored Pencils are Back!

 

2/10/25 Seven Market & Cafe, Ravenna neighborhood

My most recent play date with pals Roy and Mary Jean was fun (which it always is) as well as another media shake-up. While we’re indoors for the winter, I’ve been using our sketch gatherings to play with media that are hard for me to use in the field. Last time I used Caran d’Ache Neocolor II. Another time I tried Caran d’Ache Neopastels and Derwent Inktense Blocks. Last week, inspired by my reunion with colored pencils in Sarah Bixler’s class, I put together a palette of Caran d’Ache Luminance pencils based on the colors I’m using in class. Even if the pencils are different, I enjoy using the same limited palette so that I can get accustomed to how the hues work together.

Caran d'Ache Luminance pencils in Sarah Bixler's recommended palette 

We met at Seven Market and Café, a small, eclectic venue in the Ravenna neighborhood in a former old house. Offering provisions like wine, canned fish, stationery, and their own roasted coffees, not to mention excellent pastries, we laughed about how we could live there for a long time! The sketch at top of post looks down the aisle of working antique refrigerators and wine.

Of course, I always like to record the outing in my sketch journal, which is currently a limited edition Field Notes containing turquoise pages. I thought this notebook would be an acceptable, temporary break from Uglybooks, but I must say that the latter’s 80-pound paper has certainly spoiled me. This Field Notes contains 24-pound Astrobrite, and I love the color, but I’m getting bleed-through with some markers and brush pens, and the surface pills under rough Posca markers. Unexpectedly, I’m also feeling cramped by the standard Field Notes size (3 ½ -by-5 ½ inches). You wouldn’t think losing a quarter-to-half-inch in page size would make much difference, but it does. I’ll finish this one up, but I’m already looking forward to going right back to my beautiful Uglies.

Breakfast at Seven Market and lunch at Isarn Thai Soul Kitchen 

I’d been neglecting my round robin Seawhite of Brighton concertina, so I hastily made a sketch facing the storefront with a window view of a Chinese pinwheel palm. After sketching in the book we each had that day, we made another rotation in our round robin. We already have plans for our next group project after the concertinas are full!

Through the front window

A learning opportunity: After I took my “trophy shot” (below) of the colored pencil sketch to share on social media, I frowned at how wimpy the colors and especially the values were. I thought the sketch was done, but sometimes I don’t see how easily I could improve it until after I take a photo. Something about a flat, digital image enhances flaws – which is very helpful! I went home and layered the same colors over different areas and added more contrast overall (the finished sketch at top of post).

Wimpy colors and values

One last highlight: In addition to colored pencils, guess what else is back in action? My beloved Peg & Awl mini Sendak (one of them, anyway)! My commitment to a small everyday-carry bag has prevented me from using any of my Sendaks regularly, which makes me very sad. On our mixed-media play dates, though, I always bring a larger sketchbook and enough additional media that I need to use an auxiliary tote bag anyway, so I’m thrilled to have a purpose for a Sendak again!

Mini Sendak back in action! (Photobomb by Weather Bunny adorning the cover of my concertina's slipcase.)