In this brush pen and watercolor sketch in a Hahnemühle Travel Journal I’m working with wet media on a drawing paper and loving it. (I’ll have a counter opinion about using non-watercolor paper coming up another day on the blog.)
You can click on the image and read the in-context text, me cooling my heals, not able to go into the studio and work on the computer because I’m waiting for the a.c. repair company and all the studio equipment has been powered down, moved, and wrapped in plastic!
But the amazing thing about this page is that down at the bottom of the page there is a little footnote about going out to eat at “Everest on Grand.”
That’s a part of life I really miss in the pandemic.
This page also reminds me that they didn’t fix the a.c. on this day, and it wouldn’t be until they returned in the spring of 2020, during the pandemic, that they were finally able to fix it.
I look at this sketch and I have to smile. I remember how I was working extra quickly, expecting them at any moment. I remember how I wasn’t waiting for the color in his hair or stubble to dry, before adding more—a risky things on the best of watercolor papers, but totally reckless on drawing paper not sized for wet media.
But I also remember how for the few moments I was working on this sketch my mind was focused on line from the pen and what would constitute an “essential wash” where I stretched the paper’s capabilities a little but not too much. I actually love that polka dot hair, and of course the stubble.
Drawing has the ability to take me out of my head, stop me from worrying or stressing about things like a.c. repair, and solve visual problems. I can’t recommend it enough.
(For other work in a Hahnemühle Travel Journal please search also for Hahnemühle Travel Book with my search engine. The naming of this product has confused me since day one. As I currently understand it the Travel book is the soft covered pamphlet. I’m using the book that has a black cover and looks not unlike a Moleskine on steroids [because of the thickness of the spine]. For a few years now this is my favorite commercially bound journal, even though it doesn’t contain wet media paper. I can’t help myself, I love a challenge.)
