This post is about my current mania for sketching tulips, my attempts to capture their beauty and the pros and cons of each approach. At the end, you’ll find details of my summer teaching schedule.
1. Ink and watercolour on 100% cotton cold pressed 250g A6 Portrait Hahnemühle sketchbook
Pros:
- Quick, easy and colourful.
- Clean.
- Beautiful paper texture.
Cons:
- Not vibrant enough, and a little boring.
- I chose the wrong view – too close – not the fault of the medium.
2. Gouache on Fabriano 25% cotton 300g cold pressed 30cm X 40cm (12″ x 15″)
Pros:
- I really like being able to layer colours. I like adding the base layer in a watery wash, then painting thicker colours on top.
- Loved the vibrancy of the colours.
- Love that you can add coloured pencil on top, although I didn’t this time – a rigger was all that was required.
- I feel that there’s loads of potential for loosening up and getting playful with this medium.
Cons:
- So messy. Such a drag having to wipe the brush off on a sponge each time, before slooshing it in clean water. I am loathe to get up once I am happily settled, so I hate having to change my water.
- Forget subtlety and forget leaving areas untouched for whites (mostly). I also dislike the opaque nature of gouache, whilst I also like it. I am conflicted.
- Comes with a lot of kit, including a proper ceramic palette. I am used to doing everything on a matchbox (-sized palette).
- One of my students commented that while she found it very lovely, it doesn’t have life or magic, and she’s dead right. More on that later!
3. Watercolour on Fabriano 25% cotton 300g cold pressed 30cm X 40cm (12″ x 15″), light pencil shapes followed by tulip shapes in a squirrel mop
Pros:
- Watercolour is lovely and very delicate.
- You can capture light so easily.
- Brush first can be very beautiful.
Cons:
- Boring. I wasn’t feeling it.
- Might have been a bit large for me in ths case.
4. Ink and watercolour on Fabriano 25% cotton 300g cold pressed 30cm X 40cm (12″ x 15″), pen followed by paint
Pros:
- Pretty in its own way.
- Easy, clean, fast, effective.
Cons:
- I found the line a little thin…the colours a little watery…could have been the paper, the scale or something else entirely.
- Yawn!
5. Ink and watercolour, deckle-edged, cold pressed 250g 100% cotton Hahnemühle sketchbook in A6 Portrait
Pros:
- The paper’s texture, which feels absorbent and slightly rough, produces a beautiful line with the Sailor 55º fude pen. It makes the line hop a little, which gives it a lovely textured quality.
- I loved the size of the page, but I needed to push the vase back along the table quite a good bit. The small scale made the line look relatively thicker, which I liked.
- Whatever the reason, I was inspired, and when I saw the mirror just behind the bouquet and its beautiful reflections, I felt I was on the home stretch. I love the resulting depth of field.
- My class loved this subject: I always know which ones are more popular by the number of their own sketches following my instruction that they’ve shared, and I saw a great many vases of tulips in our private Facebook group. The themes were: reflections in glass / mirror and the value changes that go with them; scale; composition; paint handling and drawing accurately.
Cons:
- Extremely small…very little room to express anything much of anything. I would like to try the same paper, in an A5 size.
- The paper does have a little roughness, and the pen can be just a little bit temperamental on it.
The struggle for the mojo is real – and ongoing
So, there you have it! Five approaches, with varying degrees of success.
There’s one thing more I want to add, which is the biggest lesson of all for me from this experiment. I mentioned that one of my students said she liked the gouache version, but that it had no life, and that I agreed with her (she went on to say the last one in the above list was full of “the Róisín life and magic”). I don’t want to make a gouache painting with no life! And that’s the key to learning, especially when it comes to something practical like paint or another thing that you must manipulate with your hands many times until you start to get a feel for it (literally). I was so glad she said that, because the ONLY thing I want – and I know it’s the same for you – is to get better, and to unlock the mojo, and not become smug and pleased with myself. I mean, I am very often pleased with myself, but that has come after nearly a decade and a half of constant sketching from life in one medium. You should see my work from even five years ago! Sooo much less sparkling…and in five years’ time I hope it will sparkle more again.
Now it’s time for a new direction. I think a great many artists come to this point over the course of their careers. Matisse with his giant cut outs, Picasso with his many experiments, Vivienne Westwood with her never-ending creativity…it’s always a good idea to reach through the boundaries of your comfort zone, but I personally prefer to have a guide along the way. That’s why I – and all of us – must attend classes.
Summer schedule
Watch this space for an exciting summer programme in my Sketch Club. You’re going to get EIGHT classes per month rather than four: the extra four will be for exploring new things, in a “summertime” vibe. For the last three years I have taken a break from online teaching during the summer months, but I found I missed it, and my students, too much. So this May, June and July I will run classes on Mondays and Tuesdays. (I will be AWOL in August!) Mondays at 6.00pm IST will be for all things ink and watercolour, and will cover sketching on location wherever you might be. It will be all about the nitty-gritty technical expertise that makes your sketching transport the viewer right to the very spot you captured in line and colour – and maybe even scent, sound and atmosphere, if I do my job right. Then Tuesdays at 6.00pm IST will be for gouache, Chinese and Japanese brushwork, Celtic lettering, 3D card-making, traditional illustration, mixed media – with the emphasis on play and exploration. I’m doing a special offer of the same monthly fee of €50 (roughly $50) for the three months of May, June and July for all 8 classes per month. There’s a catch – the days of the week might change a little, when it’s beyond my control. I have an ongoing family situation at the moment which could cause last-minute changes to the schedule, but I will always make it up on another day of the same week. And of course, everything is recorded for your convenience. The other catch is that this is for these three months ONLY and will return to the normal schedule in September.
If you book your place in my Sketch Club today, you’ll get most of April’s live classes – which are just on Mondays this month, followed by our communal Group Chats on Tuesdays – a good time to try out my classes and see if you like the cut of my jib. Book here: https://roisincure.com/product/sketchclub/ – give yourself the gift of artistic fulfillment. That’s what I am doing these days, by learning with my favourite mentors online.
Next time: I will share my current forays into traditional illustration (ink and watercolour) and techniques in gouache, and the ups and downs of my art journey. You can also check out my YouTube channel for a detailed, step-by-step on my recent gouache painting, an interpretation of a (gasp!) photo I took.
SketchPockets are in stock – get yours while you can. Cactus leather, with or without art materials, black or white. I will shortly be introducing some options, to suit your budget. Link to buy: http://roisincure.com/product/sketchpocket-black/ – I am well aware of tariffs to the US, and customs taxes to the UK, but it’s an evolving situation so keep your ears to the ground! The reviews are coming in thick and fast and I am humbled and delighted by them. You can send me yours to sketchwithroisin@gmail.com, and I hope to have somewhere on my website for you to post them too. A comment after this blog post – either as a reply to the email you have, or on my website – would be terrific and much appreciated!
See you then – and happy sketching!
