This year I had a very relaxed approach to the 30×30 challenge ie. I wasn’t seriously trying to do it. I made a bit of an effort for the first week (see here) but since then, I’ve just done my normal sketching.

Although I am talking about direct watercolour during the livestreams that I’m hosting each week as part of the Edges Group Run-through, I’m more in an ink and wash mood. So when I’ve been out and about, I’ve mainly been adding ink to my sketches.

However, I’m happy to report that I did make it to 30 direct watercolour sketches with only a little push at the end. On Monday I spent 2 x 30 minute sketching sessions doing four quick sketches – two landscape studies from photos taken during my recent road trip and two Palladio buildings. In previous years I’ve been in Italy at some point during June (or virtually last year) and so I wanted to finish off the challenge (numbers 29 and 30) with my favourite subject matter in direct watercolor.

In the past, I’ve had a number of takeaways from the challenge – see here and here – but this year as it’s been mainly associated with my Edges course…

I’ve been thinking more about making the most of the edges in my direct watercolour sketches – how I use hard vs soft and strong vs weak edges. I’ve also reminded myself that the wetness of the first pass needs to be just right so that I can start applying the next layer of paint. If the first pass is too wet, I’m just not patient enough at the moment, to wait for it to dry and instead I’m switching to my pen.

So here is the rest of my sketches for the 30×30 challenge. Quite a few were done specifically for Edges Group Run-through so some are missing from this collection as they relate directly to course content.

Well, it looks as if the 30×30 challenge in conjunction with the Edges Group Run-through has gotten me back into the mood for some teacup sketching! 🙂