I am still waiting to hear about the paper sizing for the poster project over in Ecuador, but my new sheets of Fabriano Artistico paper arrived from Jackson’s so I was able to crack on with the paintings of the last three birds. To top up the order so that it qualified for free delivery, I bought a couple of new sketchbooks; more on those later.
Here (clockwise from top) are the Reddish Hermit, the Harpy Eagle, and the Black-necked Red-Cotinga. It’s ages since I painted a proper illustration so it was nice to be back so to speak. The hummingbird was tricky as there seems to be a lot of variation with the plumage, and depicting iridescence in gouache is always a bit pointless. Anyway, I hope this one is ok.
Here is the poster with the new additions and a different background, but I think I’ll go back to one of the previous incarnations. Honestly I am really struggling. If I use a plain colour it looks really boring, but any pattern makes the text hard to read. I want to communicate that it’s deep jungle, hence the dark green, but it’s surprisingly unforgiving. I’ve experimented with lighter hues for the text, but it then has to have a dark outline which makes it look overly fussy. More thought required…
Sketchbooks
I bought a couple of Royal Talens sketchbooks to add to the paper, and I don’t think it’s a brand I have tried before. I got a small (10cm square) one and an A4 one as the specification said it was the same as the Leuchtturm but the price was much lower. I am also waiting for the new colours to come out with Leuchtturm as I’ve used all the ones they have for this year, and Royal Talens had a lovely peachy-pink one. Much as I love my A4 sketchbook, I thought that now I can go out and about, it might be fun to try a small one as I’ve not tried the combination of a large at-home sketchbook and a small out-and-about one. I like a square format but the A4 works really well at my desk; however the little square option appealed to me.
Although the paper is the same weight as the Leuchtturm, it doesn’t take a wash very well, and is slightly rough, and definitely cream-coloured rather than white. I tend to slop water around with a lot of my sketches and I was worried that it had bled through the page, but the page of gouache actually dried out perfectly well even though the pigment from my ink drawings definitely appeared on the other side. Dry media and a very light wash only perhaps? I’ll be interested to see how I get on with the A4/small square duo. Here are some pigeons, drawn using my fountain pen and grey ink, and a pencil sketch of the view from my much-needed cup of tea at Waterstones on the Strand before running a life-drawing class, done in Blackwing pencil. The slight toothiness of the paper takes pencil really well, but my drawings of Tatiana with the Pilot parallel pen and indigo ink from the next page has seeped through, as you can see.
What have you been sketching recently?
