BONUS LESSON

I wanted to share an extra ideas in a little bonus lesson. I this approach frequently in my own art practice and thought it might also be of interest to you.

CREATING PAINTINGS

The isn’t strictly a sketchbook exercise, it is a method to explore colour, mark making and experiment with the ideas of unity and variety. In the video I share how I paint on a large piece of paper with acrylic paint, experimenting with marks, shapes, colour and techniques. When the paint is dry I cut the paper into 8 or 12 smaller even sized rectangles, ie create 8 smaller paintings from one piece of paper. I then repaint over each of these accidental compositions to try and make it work as a piece of art in its own right.

Painting your sketchbook page before you draw on it

The second idea is a way to prepare your sketchbook pages in advance with marks and paint to create an interesting painted surface to draw over. In this example I use acrylic paint but you could use any paint you have, watercolour etc…

You may want to be mindful of:

• Using a colour and tone which will allow your subsequent drawing to show up

• Only doing one double page at a time and leaving it open to dry so that all your pages don’t stick together!

There are lots of ways to pre prepare your sketchbook pages to make them feel unique to you, scribbles, painting the whole page one colour, collaging in newsprint or an interesting paper etc and then drawing over the top.