Bad Sketches

 

6/6/26 cloud study (photo reference)

Sometimes sketches just go bad. What can I learn from them?

Weather forecasters recently warned of rain, high winds and thunderstorms. The wind was real, but the rest was over-hyped. Walking through Maple Leaf Park, wondering if I would be caught in the impending storm, I saw a foreboding wall of dark clouds building to the south. I snapped a quick photo and hustled home.

Although I’ve tried painting clouds with watercolors, I’d never tackled them with Caran d’Ache Neocolor II crayons. Initially, I used my usual wet-in-wet “licking” technique. Then while the page was still wet, I went in directly and aggressively with dry crayons. I should have known better, but I used a Hahnemühle Akademie student-grade sketchbook, which doesn’t hold up quite as well as the 100 percent cotton version that I’m used to. The result (above) is not a disaster, but it’s not the look I was going for. I’ll try again sometime in the cotton book and see if that’s better.

The sketch shown below, made on location, was a mistake of a different sort. I was happy to see that the Green Lake Starbucks had opened their rooftop deck for the season. In the distance, these sunlit trees caught my eye. I was so eager to go straight in with color that I failed to think about the composition – which is nonexistent. Even as I began, I was already wagging my finger at myself: I should have done a thumbnail first! When I knew I was in irreversible trouble, I decided to distract myself by working on the murky area behind the trees – maybe the high contrast would help! HA!

6/12/26 Green Lake neighborhood

Someday I’ll go back and try that one again, too.

If I can learn even one thing, a bad sketch isn’t bad at all – just ugly. 😉

My Sketchbook’s Gifts to Me

 

Another partially used sketchbook conquered.

My goal to fill partially used sketchbooks continues. My latest conquest is this Hahnemühle Akademie Aquarelle sketchbook. For student grade, it contains excellent paper, but once I discovered Hahnemühle’s watercolor books containing 100 percent cotton paper, especially on location, there was no turning back.

What makes this book unusual is that it is entirely filled with sketches using reference photos and some imaginary work – not a single page drawn from life. I did a lot of portrait practice, both human and animal, direct watercolor challenges, workshop exercises, composition practices – all done from home.

An exercise in imaginative drawing and watercolor play.

The superpower of working on location is that the sketch becomes permanently infused with sensory memories from the experience. When I look back at an urban sketch, especially from my travels and other experiences that were new to me, all the sounds, smells and feelings of making the sketch come rushing back.

This book doesn’t evoke any memories or feelings in that way. Even when I sketch from a photo I’ve taken myself of a place I know well, the superpower of drawing from life doesn’t work. Although seeing a portrait made of an Earthsworld stranger sometimes  makes me recall whatever struggle or satisfaction I may have felt from an approach or medium I was trying, the subject and experience have no other emotional connection.  

Lots of Earthsworld people! I usually crop images neatly for this blog, but here are the full pages, messy scribbles and all.

This volume, however, is emotionally meaningful in a different way. I began using it in March 2023 in the midst of my most difficult, painful caregiving years. Most pages were filled late at night when I could finally take respite to recover from the day’s challenges so that I could sleep. I now see the book as the direct product of the art therapy that probably saved my life (or at least my sanity). Recalling that time, it’s hard to look through now, but I’m also filled with gratitude.

Composition studies using the Caran d'Ache mixed media set

I also appreciate the purely experimental nature exhibited in this book. With no connection to subject matter, I could focus exclusively on media, technique, approach or whatever else I was exploring. With my grounding in urban sketching, I tend to think of my sketchbooks mainly as repository for my on-location observations. The pages are finished products. But to many artists, a sketchbook is a place for play and experimentation. I have sometimes worried that I don’t do enough of that kind of play in my daily-carry sketchbook, but this book makes me realize I have been doing it all along – I just keep the play in a separate volume.

It is always with great satisfaction that I put away a completed sketchbook into my bookcase designated for that purpose, and my urban-sketch-filled books are usually the most rewarding. This one surprised me for all it has given back to me.

I filled the few remaining pages with doomscrolling prevention tactics and my recent Blick themed Neocolor II palette experiments.

Blick Urban Sketch Palette (Tina Edition)

 

6/4/26 Blick's Urban Sketch palette (photo reference)

Yesterday I emulated the “Blick Exclusive” edition of Caran d’Ache Neocolor II water-soluble wax pastels with the Botanical and Earth Tones theme. In today’s post, I recreate the Urban Sketch set (of course). As I mentioned yesterday, my Cobalt Blue (160) and Emerald Green (210) have gone missing, and both appear in this palette too, so they are absent in my recreation. I didn’t think Cobalt Blue was necessary since Ultramarine is included, but a green seemed essential, so I subbed in Phthalocyanine Green (710).

While the color range is wide enough for most urban scenes, it’s a bit heavy on browns and other earth tones for my needs, and including both Sepia and Black seems nearly redundant. I use Light Gray (intended for pavement, I suppose?)  so infrequently that I didn’t know what to do with it in my sketch. I ended up using it mostly to block in shapes that I colored over later with other colors. It’s curious that the palette includes Lemon Yellow, Golden Yellow and Orange while the Botanical and Earth Tones set includes only one yellow. (A-ha – the tin illustration shows a classic yellow taxicab.)

Phthalocyanine Green stands in for Emerald in my recreated palette.

With blue and green in the palette, I knew what I needed in my reference photo: Trash cans! Maybe I was influenced by the theme’s name, but I found this palette comfortable and easy to use. I only needed to take artistic license with the car’s color (yellow cabs are extremely rare in these parts). Not seeing an obvious way to use Vermilion and Carmine with this reference photo, I had to start a dumpster fire (ha-ha).

While Phthalocyanine Green is ideal for trash cans, I find it too unnatural for foliage. Using this palette taught me, however, that when warmed with Lemon Yellow, it’s not bad.

As I did with yesterday’s palette, I balked at too many colors being used for no reason – and then I reminded myself that no one said I had to use them all. In any case, I enjoyed using these palettes as a fun exercise in stretching my color vocabulary. It was relaxing, too, because I didn’t have to think about which colors to choose. I’ll add this to my doomscrolling prevention toolkit.

The two themes I emulated are each wide-ranging enough that they could be used as standalone sets. The Blick Exclusive series has two more sets – Fantasy Dreamscape and Floral Expressions. Fantasy Dreamscape is overly heavy on cool hues, and the floral set wouldn’t be adequate for urban scenes, making both less versatile. If I come across reference photos that might be appropriate for those palettes, I might try them someday.

In the meantime, I have a more pressing matter at hand: Where could my Emerald Green and Cobalt Blue be . . .?

Blick Botanical and Earth Tones Palette (Tina Edition)

 

6/3/26 A hot mess of 13 colors (photo reference)

Cruising casually on the Blick site one day (as one does), I came across a series of new products: Caran d’Ache Neocolor II sets with a “Blick Exclusive” label! At first my heart skipped a beat: What?? New Neo II colors that only Blick can sell?? It didn’t take long for my heart rate to return to normal; the colors aren’t new at all. Caran d’Ache has curated four themed palettes for Blick to sell exclusively. The 15 colors in each set are all from Cd’A’s standard Neocolor II line, the sets come in Cd’A’s standard red tins, and Blick’s name is on the sleeves.

It’s an interesting co-marketing play. I know that Blick is widespread in the US, but I wouldn’t have guessed that the art supply store is ubiquitous enough for Cd’A to put the store’s name on one of its bestselling products.

In any case, the most interesting part to me was looking at the colors that had been selected for each theme. I’ve found it to be an intriguing creative exercise to try on a palette that someone else has designed. The first time I tried it was several years ago with the Beya Rebaï Neocolor II sets. More recently, fashion designer Kévin Germanier’s surprising palette of colored pencils inspired me in unexpected ways (which led to my own palette-making discoveries that I’m still applying).

Since I own almost all the Neocolor II colors, I thought it would be fun to recreate a couple of the “Blick exclusive” palettes and try them. Today’s post is my version of the Botanical and Earth Tones palette. A couple of colors are missing here: Cobalt Blue (160) and Emerald Green (210). (I’m sure I own both, as my swatch page includes them, yet both have mysteriously disappeared from my studio. Annoying.) I thought the 13 I had were plenty, though, to make a sketch.

Two colors missing from the palette: Cobalt Blue and Emerald Green

While I do understand that no one is expected to use all the colors in the set in a single work, I gave myself that challenge just for fun. My natural tendency is to minimize my palettes to the extreme, but my recent bingeing of Colin Woodward’s YouTubes and taking his mini-workshop have pushed me to try being more maximalized.

Since the theme is flowers and plants, I dug through my reference photos to find one with lots of both, especially in the colors of the palette. The hot mess shown here is the result. The greens were all familiar to me, as I use them often (one is in my current daily-carry). I found it odd, though, that the set includes two olive-y greens that are so similar. I suppose the light blue was intended for the sky in landscapes, but the photo I chose had none visible, so I tossed it around at will. I didn’t learn much from this palette except that 13 colors were too many for this sketch, and I winced at the lack of palette cohesion. Making the scribbly mess was fun, though.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post when I recreate another “Blick exclusive” palette.

Bob Blast’s Painterly Tips

 

5/21/26 photo reference

Bob Blast’s YouTube channel recently came to my attention. Scanning through his titles, I can see that he is a painter, not a sketcher, but as I always do with painting instruction videos, I try to apply his approach to any medium I might use. That’s how I use oil painter Ian Roberts’ extremely informative videos about composition. It’s usually a little more difficult to use pencils, crayons or markers in place of paint, but I enjoy the challenge of attempting it anyway. And almost always, the exercise reconfirms that basic art and design principles apply to any medium.

In the video I viewed recently, Blast (Bob’s real last name is Burridge, but I like that he uses “Blast”) shows how he designs paintings around figures by putting the highest contrast around the area of the focal point. He also uses negative space to clarify and design shapes. Finally, he stresses the importance of showing the direction of light. His style is more abstract than I would typically use for urban sketching, but its visual appeal made me want to try it.

Using a reference photo I had snapped on a walk, I picked out some primary colors in water-soluble markers and crayons. My color choices were based on values, not the photo, and I grabbed basic hues so that I wouldn’t get distracted by trying to “match” what I saw.

Although this approach is very different from the way I usually think, I like the result. I’m especially pleased with how the dark negative space defines the left figure’s lighted side. (I would have liked the way the high-contrast negative space defines the dog’s lighted side if I hadn’t inadvertently drawn the ground shadows through its body!)

5/23/26 Statue of Lenin, Fremont

Anyway, this exercise was a lot of challenging fun. It motivates me to take more high-contrast reference photos so that I can practice this exercise again. 

Could I ever do it on location? It’s often difficult to find a high-contrast scene with ideal lighting that would make this exercise easier, but now that I’m aware of what to look for, I see more potential. Last week in Fremont, I was thinking about Blast’s tips as I sketched the statue of Lenin. Several dense trees are behind Lenin’s head. I made the tree on the left (the lit side of the statue) darker to have higher contrast against the focal point. On that overcast afternoon, I also exaggerated the contrast between light and shadow on the whole statue and made the direction of light more obvious -- something I became more aware of because of Blast’s videos. 

Abstract Colors, Abstract Shapes

 

4/29/26 Maple Leaf neighborhood (This house, which looks more like a beachfront hotel than a residence, is actually dark brown, but I had no problem turning it blue-violet, which has become a favorite dark in my palette. On the other hand, I felt compelled to color the trees around it in their natural hues.)

As Colin Woodward’s YouTubes have made me think more consciously about abstraction, I’ve come to realize that some types of abstraction come more easily to me than others. The textures and shapes of trees and foliage, for example, are easier to abstract than their hues, which I feel compelled to make as natural as possible (I talked about this a bit in yesterday’s post, too).

On the other hand, humanmade shapes likes houses and cars are more challenging to abstract, but it’s easy to use non-realistic (or non-real) colors to depict them.

5/3/26 Maple Leaf neighborhood (With some difficulty, I tried to abstract the cars as much as possible. The blur of foliage was easier to abstract by simply focusing on values.)

Strangest of all is that it’s easier to abstract both shapes and colors when I work from photo references (as below) than from life. It should all be the same to my brain, yet whenever I sketch from life, I feel I must be more life-like. (As is often the case, my brain can be annoying.)

4/15/26 photo reference (Both shapes and colors are easier to abstract when I draw from a photo)

Hacked flat waterbrush

In somewhat related news: Woodward, a painter in various media, uses many types of “real” brushes (he’s too polite to say, but I can tell that he eschews the waterbrush and keeps one around only for emergency use). One of his favorites is a flat wash brush. Although I have no intention of using real brushes on location, he inspired me to dig out a waterbrush I had hacked several years ago. It’s a standard Kuretake waterbrush with a flat edge that I cut (with some difficulty) at an angle. I goofed around with it at the time to make portraits, then forgot about it.

I’m glad I kept it! The point is finer than a Kuretake medium-size round waterbrush, which is my go-to, and it has come in handy a couple of times for details. More useful, though, is the angled flat edge, which enables activating a large area of foliage, for example, without getting the dreaded dab-dab-dab look that can occur when using a round Kuretake. (In fact, avoiding the dab-dab-dab look was what led me to start using a spritzer to activate foliage years ago.) It might just be a novelty, but I’m keeping it in my bag for now.

Working Toward Abstraction

 

4/30/26 Volunteer Park

Sometimes the all-mighty algorithm finally gets it right.

With my reignited love for Caran d’Ache Neocolor II water-soluble crayons, I’ve been looking around for unique or unusual ways that urban sketchers or mixed-media plein air artists are using them.

For quite a while, I wasn’t very inspired. A lot of YouTubers are swatching all the colors for their audience, but I wasn’t seeing much art that involved unique approaches or techniques.

Eventually Colin Woodward popped up in my YouTube feed. Primarily a watercolor and acrylic painter, the Irish artist has lately been exploring both Neocolor II crayons and Derwent Inktense pencils – and he sometimes takes them out for plein air work. A-ha – finally something new and appealing! I’ve been bingeing on his videos ever since.

Although he’s done a few urban scenes, most of his landscapes are of northern Ireland’s lovely woods and streams. His spare, abstract style involves nuanced brushwork to activate water-soluble pigments; in other words, he’s applying water the way a watercolor painter would. One thing I really like about his informative demos is that he explains subtleties like why he changed the grip on his crayon or chose a particular brush at that moment.

Without trying to emulate his brushwork style (which involves a lot of nice watercolor brushes that I don’t intend to use, especially in the field), I tried a sketch at Volunteer Park (top of post). (This type of multi-layered scene of different types of trees is exactly what I was practicing from home recently.) I used my same old waterbrush – but more actively than I typically would. For years now, my primary means of activating color in trees and other foliage has been to spritz the page lightly with water. I like the organic look that results – most of the time. But other times I’ve lost control of the amount of water or direction of the spray.

Central to my sketch is the dense foliage of a magnificent sequoia. That’s very different from the lighter, airier foliage of deciduous trees that I have watched Woodward draw. Still, I tried to be more conscious of the tree’s form as I activated in a more controlled manner.

5/1/26 Maple Leaf neighborhood

What my sketch above lacks is Woodward’s abstract elegance. The next day, still thinking of Woodward’s northern Irish landscapes, I stopped on my walk for a typical Tina landscape (about as far from northern Ireland as I could get!): a Maple Leaf alley, at right. In an A6-size Hahnemühle sketchbook, it’s difficult to do any kind of detail with chunky Neocolor crayons, so all I could do was make smudges of color for the trash cans. I like that forced abstraction!

Though my baby steps may not be obvious, I’ve been working toward greater abstraction for a while now. Sometimes it comes out because I’m cold and need to work extra fast. It’s a lot easier when I’m working from reference photos, I discovered. I can set myself an assignment to be looser and more abstract and then focus on that task in the comfort of my home. On location, I have so much “reality” in front of me that I tend to switch on auto-pilot urban sketching, which always comes out tighter and more “real.”

Detail from on-location comics

Another thing I’ve observed about my own process is that the comic-y, line-drawing sketches (example at left) I’ve been making the past couple of years go a long way in satisfying my need for capturing “reality” with no need for abstraction. The drawings are tight and descriptive for a reason, and I like them that way. Sometimes when I do both types in the same location (these sketches from a recent drink & draw are a good example), the part of me with a need for tightness relaxes and allows me to be more abstract. That insight is a big personal win!

My goal for this spring and summer, when I tend to use more color, will be to push myself a bit harder toward abstraction on location. Maybe Woodward’s inspiration will be the nudge I need.

Master Copies of Van Gogh

 

3/10/26 Master copy of Vincent Van Gogh

A website called Draw Paint Academy recently crossed my radar; in particular, an article about the lesser-known works of Vincent Van Gogh. Since I have no formal education in art history, I appreciate learning from writers who can talk about masterworks in a layperson’s language without getting all academic-y.

Two paintings caught my attention: Trees in the Asylum Garden and Saint-Paul Hospital Park (both from 1889). Especially struck by the vibrant color contrasts and dynamic brush strokes (the paintings seem to shimmer and vibrate), I felt inspired to make master copies.

I wasn’t going to use oil paints, of course, but I thought about what dry medium at my disposal might be able to emulate those hatchmark-like brush strokes. Although I hadn’t used them in a long time, Prismacolor Art Stix had come up in a recent conversation with Roy and Mary Jean, so they were out on my desk. Basically block-shaped colored pencils on steroids, they could make flat, broad strokes, and my set includes a good range of colors. Why not? (Related geeky afterthought: Imagine if Derwent made their Drawing Pencil cores in a block form! Be still my heart!)

It’s always instructive and illuminating to copy a masterwork. For one thing, the palettes of these two paintings look so cohesive that I thought the range of hues would be fairly limited, but once I started trying to match them all, I was surprised by how many colors are in them. You know me and my limited palettes; these were boldly outside my comfort zone!

3/12/26 Master copy of Vincent Van Gogh

I noticed that Van Gogh liked to outline shapes with a dark color. Did he “draw” the shapes first and then fill them in? Or did he paint the shapes, and outline later? I’ve seen this in his other works too, but it wasn’t until I copied these myself that I studied the paintings with those questions in mind. The technique caught my attention because it flies in the face of the traditional painting instruction we read in books or hear from instructors: Objects in reality never have lines around them; avoid drawing them (or avoid letting them show in the painting).

One thing I had difficulty with, especially using a dry medium, was covering the entire “canvas” with color as he did (and as most painters do). Sometimes I think this is one of the biggest differences between a sketcher (at least this sketcher) and a painter: I never feel compelled to cover the entire page, and, in fact, I prefer to leave white space. That’s just my style, but it’s also a limitation of my chosen media. It would be impractical and time consuming to cover every speck of paper surface with colored pencils or even crayons. With none of the grace but maybe at least some of the energy, I tried my best to emulate the spirit of Van Gogh’s gestures.

There’s plenty more to study and learn from copying Van Gogh (or any master). I’ll put this in my doomscrolling prevention tool kit. It seems like master copying might be too mentally taxing for late-evening work, and it was certainly not relaxing as, for example, sketching from my own reference photos with Derwent Drawing pencils. But trying to emulate another work takes away the need to be expressive in my own way. In any case, I recommend it.

No limited palette for Vincent!

Beyond Doomscrolling Prevention

 

2/23/26 Neocolor II in Hahnemuhle sketchbook

2/23/26 Derwent Drawing pencil in Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook (all sketches from photo references)

An interesting thing is happening with my evening sketches from photos that began as my doomscrolling prevention program. Keeping me from reaching for my phone is still an immediate benefit, but the long-term advantage is that I’m encouraged to use more materials from my vast stash – and sometimes experiment with using them together in ways that probably wouldn’t have occurred to me otherwise.

2/26/26 Derwent Drawing pencil in S&B Zeta sketchbook

You may recall a period a few years ago when I made more than a hundred portraits based on Earthsworld’s photos. I didn’t talk about it at the time, but that late-evening practice began as self-care during what was often my only respite as a caregiver. Drawing the faces of random strangers took me outside my anxious, agitated mind and gave me a focus. After a while, though, the practice went beyond self-care; I found myself learning from the enjoyable portraiture practice and using materials I rarely used on location.

2/26/26 Neocolor II in Hahnemuhle sketchbook

My 407 consecutive days of drawing my hand had a similar outcome: What began as self-care during a historic time became a project that took on a life of its own.

2/26/26 Inktense Blocks, Neocolor II in Hahnemuhle sketchbook

Like the random Earthsworld people, the subjects of these seemingly mundane neighborhood photos don’t mean much to me beyond their composition potential or high-contrast values. I’m having so much fun just grabbing materials that feel good in my hand and seeing what happens when I apply them to paper. Who knew that doomscrolling (or avoiding it) could have such benefits?

3/2/26 This experiment was a mix of more materials than I typically use together. I first used Prismacolor Art Stix (the block form of Prismacolor colored pencils) for the areas that I wanted to remain relatively sharp. Then I used Inktense Blocks and Neocolor II crayons for foliage that I activated with a water spritzer. Finally, I used a Fibralo brush marker to give the central tree stronger definition. 

Discovering a Tree Character

2/9/26 photo reference and imagination

Looking for more ways to avoid doomscrolling, I watched a new video from Steve Mitchell’s Mind of Watercolor YouTube channel. Although I’m not using watercolor much lately, I often find Steve’s approaches to sketching, painting and mixed media inspiring. In this video, he draws an imaginary tree character inspired by fantasy book illustrations.

Scrolling through my “trees” folder of photos, mostly taken on neighborhood walks, I found one with a spectacular twisted trunk (at left). This tree seemed to be a character already – all I had to do was exaggerate its shape a bit (but not much) and add a face. The face was easy enough to draw, but I admire the way Steve “sculpted” the face of his tree more dimensionally. I’d like to work on doing more of that.

Another fun challenge was interpreting the “light logic” for the imaginary areas of the tree and the face. Since the reference photo was taken on an overcast day, I didn’t have much to go on, so I had to squint hard, choose the light direction and make it consistent for the parts I imagined. Steve seemed to be working from a variety of references and maybe mostly imagination, but it’s obvious that his vast experience has given him a strong sense of light logic. I wish he had talked about this challenging aspect of imaginary drawing, but it probably comes intuitively for him.

2/10/26 photo references and imagination

The next evening, I tried it again (at right), this time with two reference photos: a different tree and an Earthsworld face. Working on making the face more dimensional was definitely easier with a reference photo (and it was extremely low pressure to use the reference for inspiration only and not have to think about resemblance). As with previous experiments in drawing from imagination, I want the result to look convincing as a 3-dimensional object in space, even if the subject is obviously fanciful.

Anyway, these are a ton of fun, and I plan to do more. They work my imagination, which is always hard for me, especially in the evening when I’m tired, but most of it is comfortable and familiar. 

Isn’t it amazing that these tree trunks are not fantastical at all – they are real! The trees are both outside my immediate neighborhood, so I’m not sure if I can find them again, but I hope to someday draw at least one of them realistically from life.

Color in the Bleakness

 

1/27/26 Green Lake Park

After a couple of weeks – weeks! – of much-needed daily sunshine, a thin but consistent cloud cover finally came in on Tuesday. On my walk to Green Lake, I thought about how I could challenge myself in all that flat light: In the same way that a “nothing” view helps me to focus on values, an especially bleak, colorless one would force me to eke out both the color and the values.

Foreground trees, background trees, grass – with all the values and even the hues mostly the same, I had to squint hard to make out any distinctions. Using two colors in my current Caran d’Ache Museum Aquarelle palette, I made the foreground trees way warmer and more vibrant than they appeared in reality. Then I used a blend of two cool colors for everything else. While I exaggerated the intensity, I think the values are generally realistic.

Using the values-based color ideas that I’ve been consciously thinking about lately, I’ll be darned if the color temperature concepts I had been thinking about last year crept in unconsciously! I didn’t notice until I was done. Huh – I guess my brain had been listening after all.

Color notes: Shown below is my current daily-carry watercolor pencil palette of mostly Museum Aquarelles and one Derwent Inktense. (No. 106 is crossed out because I eliminated it during trials when I realized it was too close to 599 to be useful.) It’s an amusing palette: Except for Inktense 760 (Deep Violet), which I have used frequently, all the other colors are ones that I chose by length, deliberately looking for pencils I have rarely used beyond swatching. I’m sure I’ve never used them for urban sketching because they don’t “match” anything I would normally see in my everyday Seattle environment. I’m having a ball using unusual hues without feeling like I’m randomly throwing in whatever.

Current everyday-carry pencil palette

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).

Wacky at Green Lake

 

1/18/26 Green Lake

Sunday was another day of weather we all crave in January: sunny all day, every peak in two mountain ranges fully in view, no wind, no clouds, and temps all the way up in the low 50s. Except for all the down jackets and beanies in view, Green Lake looked like the height of summer – couples, families and dogs all happily soaking in their much-needed vitamin D.

I walked partway around the lake to one of my favorite stands of trees (top of post). Although it was only early afternoon, the low sun gave them long, lean shadows. I hadn’t intended on making on-location comics, but I couldn’t resist recording snippets of conversation I overheard on the path.

As I mentioned in my post a few days ago about Inktense Blocks, I don’t usually take these fragile sticks out with me on location, but since they fit nicely in my tiny Sendak, I took them to Green Lake. I know I’ve said it before, but these Blocks are what I always want Caran d’Ache Neocolor II wax pastels to be in terms of expedient coverage and intensity of color. Now that I have a well-protected way to carry them, I am going to give the Blocks more use in the field.

Instead of continuing to walk around the lake in the same direction, I backtracked to the other side of the pier (at right). Those trees at far right of the huge fir are the same ones I sketched above.

For this one, I used reliable, familiar Caran d’Ache Museum Aquarelles – but the palette was chosen by values, just like I’ve been choosing Neocolor II crayons and Inktense Blocks.  

Process analysis: I daresay my wacky palettes are not feeling as wacky anymore! It’s getting easier and feeling natural to use unnatural hues because I know they will serve me well as long as I get the values right. I’m also seeing that I don’t have much use for the lightest value range because I tend to fall back on paper white as the lightest value. The pink sky at Maple Leaf Park was fun, but the messy application detracted; I prefer paper white to that.

Most important, I feel liberated using whatever colors I want (as determined by values) and not being tied to designated triads, complements or temperature. The key for me is to keep the palette limited – no more than four or five hues at a time – so that I’m not tempted to toss in colors randomly. I think a narrow, cohesive palette always serves my streamlined style best.

That’s not a new insight; it’s more like confirmation of something I’ve been doing all along, but with more traditional guidelines like triads. Although I didn’t learn any of this directly from Germanier, I must give a nod to his odd selection of pencils and demo that sparked this line of thinking. That’s worth every penny I paid for the set, even if I never use it again.

Derwent Inktense Blocks tuck nicely into the Sendak slots. Friction and their size keep them from getting pushed down too deeply to retrieve easily, which can be a nuisance with short tools.

Taking My Wacky Palette Outdoors: Maple Leaf Park

 

1/17/26 Maple Leaf Park

We’ve been enjoying a solid run of dry, sunny days – a weird weather pattern we often get around mid-January. Temps can drop into the mid-30s overnight but warm up to the mid-50s by afternoon. As you might guess, we urban sketchers are loving it!

It means I’ve finally had opportunities to take my wacky, values-based palette outdoors for some real urban sketching. (Although I know being inside cafés and other locations is also urban sketching, it doesn’t  scratch the itch I feel all winter.)

When I see sunshine, my first stop is usually Maple Leaf Park. I’ve sketched there so many times that most views have become “nothing” to me. By that, I mean that it takes something like a new palette to give me a nudge and see the park with fresh eyes. In addition, the “nothingness” is actually helpful in seeing values instead of subjects.

The pale blue water tower was almost the same color and value as the sky, but the sky was a bit darker blue. I used pink and pale chartreuse, the two light values in my current palette, for those. Then I used the two darkest hues, blue and violet, for everything else. It’s wacky, but I like it. 

Using pink and pale green also solves a dilemma I’ve had many times when sketching this scene: How to show contrast between the water tower and the sky when they are so similar in both hue and value (which, I suppose, was the design intention – trying to make the tower less obtrusive).

What I didn’t like is my messy dry-on-wet application of Caran d’Ache Neocolor II for the sky. I think I should have used my tried-and-true “licking” technique as I always used to for skies. Note to self for next time. Also, I realize now that I forgot to add a layer of a midtone crayon to darken the grass as I had intended!

Wacky Palette with Inktense Blocks

 

1/13/26 photo reference (Neocolor II and Inktense Blocks in
Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook)

While I’ve been enjoying experimenting with my values-based palette idea using Caran d’Ache Neocolor II water-soluble crayons, I remembered a similarly chunky yet radically different product I’ve also enjoyed: Derwent Inktense Blocks. A few years ago, I played with them enough to learn a bit about their idiosyncrasies, which can be both intriguing and frustrating. Eventually I grew to like them, even if they are a strange animal.

Sadly, I have rarely used them in the field because they’re even harder to carry than Neocolor crayons: Though lighter in weight, they are almost as bulky, and even worse, they break easily. I’ve found, however, that they fit in the slots of my tiny Peg & Awl Sendak, so I’m hoping they would be protected if I take them out with me.

As a preliminary trial of a values-based palette, and to reacquaint myself with Inktense Blocks’ quirks (many of which there are), I made some sketches from photos. Right off the bat, one difficulty is that the Blocks range includes very few hues that could be considered light in value – they are all extremely vibrant and lean toward the darker ranges.

One thing that’s remarkable about the Blocks is that they perform incomparably when applied dry to wet paper – an explosion of intense color! When I use that technique with Neocolor II crayons, they do dissolve more completely than when they are activated on dry paper, but the wax-based binder requires a bit of scrubbing. The Blocks dissolve thoroughly with very little effort. That’s not always a good thing – it’s hard to get a subtle effect when I want one – but the Blocks sure are efficient when I want to cover a large area with solid color.

For the first sketch (top of post), my reference photo was taken during one of my golden-hour walks last summer. I had nothing among the Blocks I own that was light enough for the sky, so I used Neocolor II crayons for that. I had also been wondering how well Blocks would apply over waxy Neos, which can act as a resist to some media (such as some colored pencils), so it was a good test of that. The whole sketch was made dry-on-wet. You can see how the Neos didn’t dissolve completely (unless I had gone back in and scrubbed with a brush, which I didn’t), while the Inktense Blocks almost completely covered the Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook surface. I had no problem applying the Blocks over the Neos.

1/14/26 photo reference (Inktense Blocks in Hahnemuhle
Akademie Aquarelle sketchbook)

I used only Inktense Blocks in the second sketch (at right). The house and front foliage were applied dry, then activated with a brush. I sketched the trees dry-on-wet.

And hey, if that second scene looks familiar, it should: It’s the Maple Leaf Mother Grove that I sketched from life a few days ago. If you’ll recall, I irrationally couldn’t get past my own resistance to using unrealistic colors for a reportage sketch. Knowing that these trees will likely be cut down, I had taken some photos, so I had one to use for reference. At the time, I thought my “real” colors were appropriate, but now I think I like this “unreal” sketch better. But is it “better” in terms of documenting an event? Am I still honoring the trees if I sketch them in blue and brownish-purple? Hearing myself ask that question, I realize it sounds ridiculous. It’s my sketching of them that honors them, regardless of the colors I use. What do you think? (My original on-location sketch shown below.)

1/13/26 sketched on location