Mini watercolour and pen doodles 29 and 30

 

A couple more of my mini floral doodles -

watercolour and coloured pen (3" square)

Perhaps it's time to start a different series, although I must admit I've been enjoying these.  On occasion,  attempting to think up imaginary blooms has been a bit more difficult than I anticipated.

Mini watercolour doodles 25 and 26

 

Fantasy Flowers (both 3" square)
watercolour and coloured pens

Watercolour and pen doodles 24 and 25

 

Both 3" square in watercolour Moleskine
Watercolour, coloured pens and a touch of gouache

Mini watercolour doodles 21 and 22

 

Both 3" square - watercolour, pen plus a touch of gouache

Some of this series are based on past studies of plants, while others and purely imaginary.

More mini doodles

Not all my efforts in this series have been successful or pleasing.  The first two below are rather dull.  I used a base coat of gold acrylic ink for the fuchsia, thinking it would gleam through the subsequent washes of watercolour, but rather it seemed to dull them down.  Adding gouache to try and brighten things up didn't work either.  The hollyhocks were painted in gouache over a watercolour base, with added watercolour pencil, gel pens and Neopastel - definitely lacking the delicacy of the actual flowers. (All in a Moleskine sketchbook)

Gold ink base, with watercolour, gouache
and gel pen (3" x 3")

Watercolour, gouache, watercolour pencil,
gel pens and Neopastel (3" x 3")

Watercolour and fine liner pen (3" x 3")

Exhibition and another doodle

Watercolour, fine liner and gel pens (3" x 3")

Finally, after two years, our art group is able to hold a "real life" exhibition.

The mini series continued

 

Pen and watercolour 3" x 3"
Cobalt Orange, Magenta and Cobalt Turquoise
plus white gel pen

Mini watercolour sketch

Watercolour, black fine liner, white gel pen,
silver acrylic ink (3" x 3") in
Moleskine watercolour sketchbook

Getting quite hooked on these small watercolours, started with no plan, just responding to the blended wet in wet colours.

Moleskine doodling

In the main, I have used my watercolour Moleskine books for experimenting, trying out new materials etc.    I must admit I haven't used my latest version much at all this year.  However, after watching a recent video tutorial by Tracy Weinzappel I was tempted to try a bolder approach to a technique I have often used in the past.

I taped off an area of my page, liberally coated it with water and then randomly dropped in 3 or 4 watercolours, allowing them to blend at will. Once dry,  the arrangement of colours might suggest a subject or composition and here I have drawn this in a black fine liner. Several negative glazes have been added to enhance the main image.

Watercolour Moleskine, black fine liner, watercolour,
white gel pen highlights (6" x 4")

Sketchbook Revival - All Messed Up

Another gem from the Sketchbook Revival 2020 videos - Karen Stamper's "Wild Garden" in black and white.  I was particularly looking forward to this as I had found Karen's contribution last year inspiring and freeing.

Materials and techniques suggested were graphite, charcoal, candle wax, wax crayons, glue stick, torn paper stencils, leaf prints, ink (for drawing, spraying and wash), biro, markers, collage, etc.  The idea was to start with random graphite and charcoal, loose scribbles, areas of denser black with rubbed in crushed charcoal, resist marks with wax and glue stick, more charcoal, leaf shapes erased or sprayed through stencils, real leaf prints (directly on the page or collaged), finer lines with biro, inked lines with stick pen, etc.  All really wildly messy, but great fun.

I should probably have left more white areas - I did use white acrylic and then some gesso, but neither covered the charcoal as much as I would have liked.

The Tangled Hedge - mixed media in watercolour Moleskine 

Detail

Moleskine toys

To save my blog from going "rusty", a couple of sketches from a past evening workshop devoted to toys, both completed in a Moleskine watercolour sketchbook.

Water soluble pen and watercolour

Water soluble pen and watercolour bear over a mixed media collage

Sketches and linocut lilies

It is lovely to receive a bouquet of flowers, even better when I have time to really concentrate on their colour and form by making pen or pencil and watercolour studies of them.  I file any usable sketches in ring binders so I can refer to them, sometimes years later, for reference or inspiration.

These sketches gave rise to more considered work in acrylic, watercolour, collage and lino print; with the latter I experimented further by printing on different painted backgrounds.

The flower petals were lightened with white acrylic,
with gold gel pen accentuating the stamens

A fine liner pen and silver gel pen were used on this print

A couple of early proof prints in my "Experiments" Moleskine -
on the left using fluid acrylic which wasn't successful as a printing medium;
on the right,  gouache and gum arabic print, collaged over a black gesso background

More Moleskine collages

Another couple of experimental collages.  This time I used a couple of my sketches from live model sessions, cut these out and pasted them onto backgrounds of handprinted tissue (both 8" x 5").