I’ve been spending as much time as I can with my sketchbook lately. I’m still working into one of the handmade sketchbooks Laura constructed from her big sheets of printed papers. If you’re a DMTV viewer you’ll remember the videos where she demonstrated her techniques. Are you one of the viewers who’ve told us they made their own printed sketchbooks? I wonder how your pages are coming along? Here are a couple more of mine to show you what fun I’m having with them.

There was very little print on this particular spread – just a little sliver of colour at the right of the spine. I decided to create similar shapes on the left. The circles you can see are made with oil pastel in combination with a watercolour wash.

The small squiggly circles had been monoprinted in black printing ink which is soluble. I added lots of intense watercolour and managed not to lift the black ink too much. The pale areas on the shapes were made by dropping rubbing alcohol into the centre of the wet paint.

The large tulip was roughly drawn in pastel and rich watercolour paint flooded over making sure to achieve the deepest and most intense values at the base of the flower. Another little touch of alcohol lifted the highlight.

On a gentler note I added a couple of daffodils to another page and tried to balance the colour of the print on the left hand page with some ‘weight’ of colour at the edge of the right hand page.

It’s fun to mix different mediums and techniques on the same page. I’m getting to love the simple pen sketches.

Especially when they become blurred with the touch of a wet brush. This is just a Papermate metal roller pen – you’ve probably got one just like it in your desk drawer so no excuses not to try it!

Bye for now, Linda x