Month: August 2022

Watercolour caravans

As part of my ongoing project to use up my sketchbooks and paint/draw more, I started a project at the beginning of August, called the caravans. I had a handful of Sennelier Urban sketchbooks with the green cover, accordion, so I decided I would do caravans. I’ve done a bunch of caravans in the past (in fact, found a few more in the “Missing” sketchbook today) but this was a sketchbook Just For Caravans but with a few pages less than is in sketchbook Just for Lighthouses, of which I will write later.

Anyway, basically, the accordion sketchbook is a single page and no doubt, when I eventually get good at comic strips, I’ll regret using what is no doubt going to be impossible to get in a few years time on something as trivial as caravans. Either way I intend to paint both sides of the sketchbook and am half way through the entire process. Here are some of the caravans todate:

Caravans

I think this is my favourite ambiance so far. The van isn’t perfect but I just love the sky.

Caravans
I learned a lot from this one too.

You can find the rest of the caravans here for the time being.

Caravans represent freedom to me and I’m fascinated to see how much art there is flowing around now. Especially of Airstreams. I liked the Airstream vibe so wanted to make one look a bit Airstreamy but I think it came out steampunkish instead.

Anyway, I expect this project to be finished in a few weeks’ time although who knows given the way my time management goes.

Lost sketchbooks

Back in February, I lost my handbag and it took with it my then every day carry sketchbook. I was pretty devastated as there were sketches from my most recent holiday in it. I had to lie to the loss of it, plus the every day sketchkit

But I got really irritated this week because I mislaid an A4 large sketchbook. I run god knows how many sketchbooks at the same time but two are fairly regular, one A4 which I take with me sometimes, and the little A6 which is always in my handbag. I searched the house several times and eventually found it under a pile of new books for which I do not currently have shelf space. I am not far from the end of it – I knew this much because even if I could not remember what was it (and when I found it, nice things were in it), the replacement was lined up which meant I was probably a dozen pages out from the end.

I’ve been tidying notebooks today. During the pandemic, I sketched daily, in or other of the sketchbooks. But in Brussels, the art supply and stationery shops were open so having nothing else to do, I bought notebooks, sketchbooks and art materials. I bought books and a few jigsaws as well. But I am now struggling to organise them and while I am doing better on using my sketchbooks and paints lately, it occurred to me I really need to figure out what to do with all of these notebooks (gift them? I’m not ready to give them up yet). The main answer of course is to use them.

Which still leaves with with the open question on how store them, organise them and all that. I never quite got to grips with that for the vast quantities of photographs I took. We’ll see.