Fairy Revel

One of the first pages in my sketch journal. I need to practice shading, but overall I’m pleased with how it turned out. This tree really was the most brilliant, translucent yellow-green, one of my favorite colors.

My sketch journal is a Daler-Rowney Cachet Linen Watercolor book, full of a good number of sturdy cold-press sheets of watercolor paper. This is apparently a beast that’s going extinct. I buy them whenever I see them, but they’re getting harder to find.

I spent some time working on value scales outside. It was good to practice setting up my watercolor easel and taking it down, and learning to get the right values on the paper.

Making a value scale is harder than it sounds! I wasn’t really happy with any of the ones I made, so I’m going to keep practicing. I used Winsor & Newton Payne’s Grey, which is an indigo-like color.

I won’t be able to drag this around with me on outdoor painting excursions. I hope to find out how other people carry water in their plein air kits.

My paint box again, this time full of the colors I’ve chosen. They’re Winsor Lemon, Indian Yellow, Quinacridone Red, Permanent Rose, Winsor Violet (to be swapped out with Mineral Violet, which contains a more lightfast pigment), Cobalt Blue, French Ultramarine, Viridian, Sap Green, Raw Sienna, Burnt Sienna, and Payne’s Grey.

Practice makes perfect!

Thanks to Jonathan for the impromptu photography.

The little enamelled paint box for my outdoor painting kit arrived! It’s small than an Altoids tin, and will hold twelve half-pans.

And here it is opened. The colors are Rublev watercolors from Natural Pigments. These are historical pigments that result in more subdued colors, so I’ll probably save them for the future when I want to experiment. For now I’m going to replace them with more brilliant Winsor & Newton paints.

Other than putting together my paint kit and working little by little on my painting and drawing skills, I’ve been trying to adjust to a new work schedule. It’s going all right so far, but I’m struggling to find time to read, blog, write and do social networking stuff like Twitter. Unfortunately that means I’ve been even more scarce than usual (which I admit is pretty scarce to begin with). I should be getting it all ironed out before long.