Creative Sketchbooks Module 1: Harvest Festival – Chap. 1 & 2

After a long pause - going on holiday, saying goodbye to one job and starting a new one - I have finally come back to a daily rhythm to do the course work for Module 1. So I hope it will not take me quite so long until I can post more work.

 

Chapter 1: Painting basics

I included gouache and acrylics in both a cool and a warm colour set in my basic kit. Until now I have not done much with these colours (I like watercolours, oil and pastels),  so this will be a good opportunity to get to know them better. As a start I painted them all on the first page of my sketchbook.

 

This is not a book but an A4 sketchpad for mixed media, the paper is 300gsm. I found no sketchbook with adequate paper so I chose this alternative. I will have to buy another pad for the course, but the paper is very good to work on.

 

My folding pin board with some of my fruit and vegetable photographs and sheets of paper (discarded flyers) which I use to wipe the brushes or clean the paint tray.  The “exhibition” is always changing – since I started taking photographs for the course, more and more colourful details in everyday life catch my eye.

 

Activity 1.1: Create a range of marks on your page

For this activity I used large sheets (A 2) of leftover flipchart paper, wrapping paper, Kraft paper (brown), watercolour paper, a tube of gouache crimson and a range of mark making tools: brushes in all sizes, a baking brush, foam brush, foam roller, glass and metal nibs, a bamboo nib, a small twig, a dried sage twig with leaves, credit card, a toothbrush, a painting knife, a pocket knife, a wooden wedge, natural and man made sponge, a comb, cardboard rolls, cork … I may have forgotten something.

 

Some of the tools are good for bringing a quantity of colour on the paper, like large brushes, foam and sponges, others do not carry a lot of colour, but are good for spreading it around on the paper and create patterns, like comb, twigs etc. I filled 8  large sheets with marks and still feel that I only just started exploring the possibilities. So this “library of marks” seems to be a lifelong work in progress.

 

Activity 1.2: Observational painting of a lemon

 

The outer edge of the lemon was dabbed on the paper with a piece of bamboo, other tools are a wooden wedge, a painting knife and several brushes. I used brushes to wash the colour away in some places. It was fun to use all these tools and render the lemon in a way that felt more free than the usual way of painting.

 

Mixing colours

Activity 1.3: Combine two primary colours to create a range of secondary colours

These pages were all done with gouache, using warm and cool colours.

I often found that I mixed in too much of the darker colour at a time, so sometimes I “retraced my steps”. The transition from violet to red on page 4 is not rendered well in the scan.  On page 6 the first square in the upper left corner was done with too much water. Again a potentially endless activity …

 

Activity 1.4: Mixing with black and white

 

The tints of carmine above remind me of all sorts of ice cream and fruit yoghurt, the shades of blackberries and eggplant. In addition to the shades of yellow I diluted the paint with varying amounts of water.

 

The colour wheel

Activity 1.5: Paint a colour circle

 

	Circle with gouache – warm colours
	Circle with gouache – cool colours sheets with excess paint fixed to the page with masking tape
	Circle with acrylics – cool colours Here I used only tiny amounts of black for the shades.

In every colourway there are one or two colours which are more transparent than the others and have to be mixed with care or else they are totally overpowered.

Since I painted the colour circles I get back to them again and again for reference. So the time was very well spent.

 

Extra activity: Making a colour circle with found objects

	I assembled this only recently, much later than painting the colour circles. It was a lot of fun! I collected a lot of photographs, painted a few colours and used a blue bag, a green oven cloth and a few real vegetables, nuts and fruit, among those a rotten apple. All this is spread on my kitchen table.

Collage of details in my sketchbook page 21

 

Chapter 2: More Colours

 

Activity 2.1: Use complementary colours to paint patterns

+ Extra Activity

	My first template (see above) is the shape of a bell pepper. On page 13 and 15 I left a lot of space around the shapes. I made another template of an onion and painted on an A3 watercolour sheet, using tints and shades as well (see left page 14 + 15).

Painting these shapes reminded me of filling in shapes in painting books as a child. I did not have to worry about “getting it right”, but could concentrate on the colours. A very meditative experience, I liked it a lot. It also took quite a lot of time, more than I had expected. I always set down painting as fast work in contrast to time-consuming textile work, but I find I am mistaken. 

 

Activity 2.2: Optical colour mixing

 

	The effect of this exercise, the optical colour mixing,  is much more pronounced in the scan than on the actual page. I love the spacial effect of the grid variations in the pepper shapes.
	On the next page I tried the colour mixing effect with an even smaller grid and different colours. The onion shapes on the right belong to the next activity , the blue-violet to blue-green wedge in the cool gouache colour wheel.

 

Activity 2.3: Use analogous colours to paint harmonious patterns

 

This is the red-violet  to red-orange in the warm gouache colour wheel.  I also used tints and shades. On the right I mixed a little black into a tint and a little white into a shade. The colours get more grey and lose contrast.

 

Extra acitivity: Overlapping shapes and grid in complementary and analogous colours

	My bell pepper shape in complementary colours with tints and shades. I like the contrast between the larger areas of colour and the delicate curves of the stem.
	In analogous colours, also with tints and shades. I overlapped the pepper shapes more to break up the rectangles, but now I find it looks almost too regular.

This is a fun exercise! There are details which make me think of knitting or cross stitch.  I already went over the two pages with a frame viewer to isolate interesting areas. A red to violet colourway would also be nice to try out. And – and – and …