One intimidating thing about sketchbooks is the chance of having something bad preserved in a book with other good sketches. For the most part, I am filling up my 3×5 pentalic watercolor sketchbook with good sketches, but there are some duds. I painted over one of them with a layer of pink casein because I didn’t want to see it any more and I thought it would be good to have some toned pages. I wasn’t sure how painting watercolor over it would work, though. This is the result of a test this morning:
The paint really just sits on the surface and takes awhile to dry, but it’s certainly workable. I don’t think I’d do this normally–probably better to tone the paper with watercolor instead–but it’s a good way to cover up mistakes.
While waiting for that one to dry, I also wanted to test my old 3×5 watercolor moleskine. Just messing around with some colors, this is what I came up with:
Both paintings were done largely with a connoisseur travel round (thee tree was done with a small flat). I wanted to see how big a brush would work in these little books, as I’d previously been using smaller brushes that don’t allow for working as wet and loosely. If I were to go in for some finer work, a smaller brush would be useful just to work drier, but sticking with one, I think the larger brush is the way to go.
Corey Aber 