squwetchy Talk about getting out of your comfort zone! About a thousand people walked by me as I sat on the ground in Piccadilly Circus on London this afternoon and did the sketch for this piece. People stop to take pictures of you while your sketching, look over your shoulder, and generally treat you as just as much part of the chaos of the scene when you’re doing that. Nervous as heck but that’s half the fun, right? #europe2023

squwetchy A little sketchy sketch in the park and then some additional #watercolour touch ups back at the hotel and my first day of #travel painting is done

squwetchy As much as I like sketching with ink and lines, the rawness of pure #watercolour (when I can take my brush) is starting to grow on me.

squwetchy There is a fuzzy line at the start of my professional #sabbatical and I am standing inside it I think. Yesterday I was definitely employed. Tomorrow I will be freed. Today? Today I went for a long meandering walk with the dog and sat in a park with my #sketching supplies. (Then I went home and replied to some messages on my work account.) Soon every day for a long while will be crystal clear and filled with art and creating, but today. Today I drew a #bridge … kinda like a metaphor or something?

squwetchy Back in my own backyard I tried sketching the #garden bed and my tomato plants. This was a multi-step #sketch with first laying down a rough big picture, then painting, then adding shadows, and finally after it dried deciding I wanted to add a bunch more ink detail into to central subject, the bed itself, which definitely makes it pop…

More adventures in creating stuff outside ended with a quick #watercolour #sketch in the trails and a new #video to profile the whole thing. With a million big ideas in my empty days it’s also nice to grasp onto little projects that I can share in a moment of effort.

squwetchy In my quest to do more quick #pleinair #sketching I’ve been attempting to think about the idea of the #10minutesketch … which is pretty self-explanatory I think. What can you get on paper in ten minutes? Can it capture the mood and the vibe of a place, in quick and messy wonder? The non-framed picture was painted in a park in about ten minutes.

squwetchy I was reading about this thing called the Zorn Palette (great for portraits and people scenes) which is a three colour restricted #palette consisting of yellow ochre, vermillion & black, and all the #colours you can mix on variations of those three. i don’t have those colours, at least not in tubes, but it got me thinking about a restricted palette i could make that might be good for nature scenes with just three tubes: this #watercolour and ink #sketch was done with just cerulean blue, lemon yellow and payne’s grey. if no one has named that palette yet i’m calling dibs and we’ll try some more pics with it… but i’m going to the art store someday to get me some #zorn colours too!

squwetchy A monocolour study of a whimsical #bridge and #skyline from a photograph.

squwetchy Monochrome dreams, part 1, is a study in #watercolour with a single colour of paint, a #palette of one if you will.

squwetchy another belated #newyork #urbansketching

squwetchy night sky abstract