The Sketchbook Project , first pages

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A peek at the start of a new project, as part of The Sketchbook Project; you can view my post about this here.

I drew these with a Pitt Artist pen outside (sitting on a lumpy rock!), then back inside to a comfortable chair for lettering and adding color with my water-soluble pencils.  The paper is a nice bright white, and beautifully smooth.  The ink goes on like silk, with no noticeable bleeding or penetrating (so far).  My watercolor pencils worked nicely, picking up a light texture from the paper - however, too much water is a no-no which resulted in wrinkled pages.  I’ll have to pay attention to find that fine line between just enough and too much water from my waterbrush!

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The details:

The Sketchbook Project book is from Scoutbooks.com, but I couldn’t find out any information on the paper. 

Ink:  Pitt Artist pen in black, size XS for the sketch, and S for the text.

Watersoluble media: Kimberly watercolor pencils (you can read about my set here), and Inktense by Derwent.

Brush:  Niji Aquabrush, small size.

The subjects:

I’ve written about both of these two lovely plants that are blooming right now in south Florida, so I won’t repeat myself!  If you’d like to read about the Florida butterfly orchid, please visit my post from last year.  Here is a link to the post from 2010, which also shows a honeybee and its funny pollen “hat” that I observed while drawing.

You can find the beach sunflower post here.  I started these from seed several months ago, and they are doing extremely well in a dry and sandy spot that nothing wanted to grow in before now.  The seeds took a VERY long time to germinate (or perhaps I’m an impatient gardener), but I’m glad they did.  The flowers lift my spirits every time I see them!

The cover:
Oh - and if you'd like to see what I've done with the cover so far, I wrapped it in a recycled and crumpled Tyvek envelope (blank side to the outside), and painted it with some leftover latex paint.  Wiping the paint with a damp paper towel removes enough to reveal the random fibers in the Tyvek, which add a lot of texture and interest.  The two colors I used were an "old gold" and a tobacco brown; leaving on more of the gold, and wiping off more of the brown. The last step was a seal coat with a matte acrylic medium.  I've found the Tyvek to be extremely durable as a sketchbook cover; even the wear marks add to the beauty.

Back and front of the sketchbook.

 There may be more to come regarding the cover - time will tell!  In the past I've used acrylic paint on my handmade sketchbook covers; if you'd like to see some examples, please visit my Flickr set here.

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Thanks for visiting!