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Favorite Fall Things

gouache and watercolor

I’m not ready to believe that it’s almost winter. It will still be a while until all of my boxes are unpacked from my move at the end of the summer, and in the meantime I’m trying to get back on track with where I left off. As I get my workstation set back up, I’ve been spending more time in the sketchbook, which feels good.

This past week, however, I finished this little illustration of a squirrel with nuts and mushrooms – just in time for the end of Autumn!

For this sketchbook page, I tried a vibrant watercolor background where I let most of the underpainting show through. It took a lot longer, but ultimately, I think it was worth it. Since I knew that I was going to paint with a lot of reddish-browns, I started with a yellow-green base. That way, there’s a lot of contrast between the shapes and the background to help them stand out.