Yesterday, Monday 25th June, I completed my 30th direct watercolour sketch. Yay!
This 30×30 challenge hasn’t been that much of a challenge for me as I’m travelling – so I’m obsessively sketching anyway. And over the last 9 days, I’ve had a lot of solo time and therefore lots of options for achieving ‘paint only’ work. And I have already been doing these type of sketches for the last year so the challenge for me was really just to do a few more of them. The big benefit of doing this was to work out more clearly when it is most appropriate to do paint-only, and also to develop a few new watercolour techniques. I will share my takeaways in more details in a separate article.
Sketches 16-30 all occurred in Scotland so some more cafe sketches and a lot of landscapes.
I am now in Krakow Poland, and am continuing to doing direct watercolour sketches and to count them as part of this 30×30 challenge.
So here they all are…
16. Morning latte in Artizan – a favourite Stornoway cafe
17. Very quick sketch at the standing stones at Callanish (strong wind at the time).
18. Back at Artizan again!
19.An aborted sketch of Lews Castle (due to rain) but I think it says enough.
20. View from Sonas Cafe, Port of Ness. The wind made sketching challenging so I was happy for this warm spot to sketch from.
21. Teacup from the lovely but remote Edge Cafe, Gallen Head, Lewis
22. Another day another cup of tea (and scones) at the gorgeous Skoon Art Cafe in Geocrab, Harris.
23. St Clement’s church in Rodel (battling wind again!)
24. Harris Hills heading south (sketched from my car as way too windy to be outside sketching)
25. The beaches of Harris as viewed from Talla Na Mara, inside the lovely Machair Kitchen.
26.Harris Hills, including Clisham (highest hill) looking north – from the same spot as the reference photo in SketchingNow Watercolour Lesson 2 and once again sketched from my car.
27. Beautiful Garry Beach, Tolsta, Lewis is very wild, windy conditions, This is as far as I got on location. My sister had to hold my book with two hands, so that I could take this photo.
28. Edinburgh – view from the Grassmarket
29. The Royal Bank of Scotland on The Mound, Edinburgh
30. Scott Monument, Edinburgh, done in the company of the Edinburgh Urban Sketchers group.
How are you going? Nearly finished? Have you been thinking about your takeaways?
4 Comments
You have done a fabulous job with the challenge. Thanks for sharing your paintings!
Great collection of direct paintings. It is hard to paint when it is so windy…so brava to you! I am keeping up, although the paintings I’ve done for the last few days have been very quick watercolor sketches because I’ve had several art events I was involved with and I had little time.
I am so looking forward to the watercolor class! Amazing!
These are so great! I am really going to try to work more with direct watercolor. Your class was so helpful in teaching me about colors and now I can get the colors I want the way I want them (juicy washes!), which was a huge barrier for me in the beginning, that now I want to try direct watercolor sketches!
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