One day, in April, I spent an afternoon roaming around the Art Gallery of Ontario.
It's a great gallery to revisit every once in a while, a place to take my time sketching pieces that catch my attention. During this particular visit, I focused on just sketching while also keeping in mind that I would later watercolour them in. This is why for these sketches I used a pencil crayon and a ballpoint pen to sketch in the shapes (because they would not bleed with water).
I visited a cafe after wandering the gallery and took a moment to paint in the first two pages. The rest of the pages were finished, here and there, later on. It took a bit of time for me to get through, especially when you have to wait for each page to be completely dry before moving on to the next one.Taking reference photos were helpful in this.
I didn't try to be super accurate with what the pieces actually looked like and instead focused on the things that I liked most about each of them. For example, the shapes, the colour palette, the silhouette, lighting, the subject itself, the approach - not that I would be able to replicate these things but it was fun to reinterpret these parts in watercolour.
I think it is important to finish projects (even sketches) when you initiate it, or else you begin to lose interest or motivation to finish - that is sort of what happened to me. The first few pages were still fun to approach and satisfying to complete, but the last few pages I found myself just wanting to be done with it (I wonder if that is obvious when you see them?).
I don't think the paper in my watercolour sketchbook helped much in my lack of motivation either. The paper doesn't seem to be made for more than one or two layers of watercolour, as it seems to create this odd "spotty" look to the pages. There doesn't seem to be a consistency to the pages which is frustrating, but not bad enough for me to give up on it. However, when I finish this sketchbook, I don't think I would be eager to replace it with the same one. Maybe one day I will review this one (Moleskine Watercolor Album) and compare it with others, but for now I don't have many other watercolour sketchbooks to reference to, for an idea of quality...
I love visiting galleries, museums, parks, cafes and most places for a good-ole-sketch-day. It's nice to not be worried about concepts or subjects, and just draw while getting inspired. Next sketch-day to a gallery or museum, I want to push my interpretations of what I see and use them more more ideas. However, this particular visit happened to be an example of a good practice session for watercolour painting, shapes, colour, lighting, composition and all that good stuff.
I would always recommend a dedicated sketch-day and if you have any arty friends to join you, all the better!
One day, in April, I spent an afternoon roaming around the Art Gallery of Ontario. It's a great gallery to revisit every once in a while, a place to take my time sketching pieces that catch my attention. During this particular visit, I focused on just sketching while also keeping in mind that I would later watercolour them in.