“Carrot”, ink and watercolor in watercolor Moleskine
copyright 2009 Sydney Harper
Digging through the refrigerator, I found a carrot. It’s been there, uh, a while so why not sketch it. Beside it’s fun to paint orange things. Right now I’m enjoying sketching lumpy, bumpy vegetables more than smooth ones. They just seem to have more character. Soon I’ll be left with only brown and beige root vegetables. I guess I should have been mixing them in all along.
Ink and watercolor
in Moleskine watercolor notebook
I’m continuing with the root vegetable sketch theme, depending on what I’ve bought recently. This time it’s a red onion. I’m enjoying doing these. I think what I like most about these sketches is the pen. I’ve been experimenting with a lot of different pens lately, but I’m enamored with the finest tip of my set of Zig Millenium pens (005 size or .20 mm line) for these sketches.
I’m going to have to see what else I can find at the grocery store. Of course, there’s lots of the usual stuff left to sketch but I’ll have to look for some out of the ordinary vegetables too.
Sweet potato
ink and watercolor, 5 x 8 inches
Around here, it’s the sweet potato season. Towards the end of summer and early fall, you’ll see flat-bed trucks beside the road filled with sweet potatoes for sale. That’s my indicator for autumn. Earlier in the summer, you’ll see them with watermelons and tomatoes. Maybe it’s because I like fall or maybe it’s just because I like sweet potatoes, but the sweet potato trucks always make me smile.
This is done in ink and watercolor. Lately I’ve enjoyed seeing other people’s ink sketch before the watercolor is added, so here’s my sweet potato before the watercolor was added.
One of the things I do to practice quick sketches is sketch while watching Sunrise Earth or sometimes just any show on TV. Sometimes that’s as close as I get to watching TV. It forces me to work quickly and not agonize over details. Usually I just do ink sketches, but here’s a couple where I tried something different. Sometimes I’ll do little landscapes. Other times, I’ll sketch random bits and pieces.
The sketch above was done in watercolor pencil. It was a shoreline in Massachusetts or Maine, I forget which one. I like the sketch but the watercolor pencil didn’t work well for me. I found myself spending more time on it than I wanted. But then I don’t use watercolor pencils that often so maybe it’s just an experience thing.
Watercolor worked much better. I used my travel watercolor kit for the sketch above. I don’t have much time to think about colors or technique and sometimes I don’t get a chance to finish what I’m sketching. It’s a good change of pace from my usual sketching.
