This year, I am ready to get outside and do some walking and some painting. Hopefully, both at the same time! I haven’t done much plein air work, which just means trying to capture what you see outside, around you. I have always wanted to. It’s been on the “things I want to do this year” list since I can practically remember. This year, I am making it happen. I’m fitting it into my schedule. I am putting together a kit.
The watercolor above is a morning exercise last week when the snow was falling here in Michigan. It’s based on a photo of some woods with snowdrops blossoming. I’m so ready for spring flowers that they appear on the next page of my sketchbook last week, too!
This was an experiment where I layered gouache paint over a background of acrylic paint in my sketchbook. Since the gouache couldn’t absorb into the paper, you can tell where it blooms and pools more than if I would have used a watercolor or even gouache background. I don’t hate it, though, it just kind of makes the gouache look more like watercolor.
This Halloween cat illustration in the sketchbook was pretty quick and dirty, but turned out really nicely for what was a quick one-hour exercise. It also feels great to get seasonal in my new workspace, even if I’m still technically settling in!