Illustration + Nature Sketching
How have you arrived in the new year? I’m always struggling a bit with the lack of light during the winter months. As I’m typing, it’s snowing heavily, so at least there’s a bit of white floating around in the darkness. I always try to keep myself occupied with creative projects during times like this. …
At the end of the year I took some time to go through my sketchbooks and I thought it might be interesting to talk about different layout ideas. There are a lot of ways you can arrange items on your page, and having a clear idea of how you want your page to look like …
I’ve been continuing to sketch landscapes in watercolor and gouache, here is an outtake from my sketchbook in autumn. Here’s a video version of this post: Landscape Painting Sketchbook Tour | Autumn 2020 I usually do quick studies in a small sketchbook that is the size of my palm, and when I like the subject …
I haven’t done a sketchbook tour in a while, and some of these pages feel like I’ve done them ages ago. In fact, they span from September to early December. I haven’t been nature journaling as much as I’d like, but I’ve done a lot of landscape studies – I’ll share another tour with these …
Here’s one more mushroom sketching video that didn’t fit into the class anymore. It shows the sketching process for a classic brown capped mushroom, and I also demonstrate how to add light reflections at the end. Sketching a basic mushroom Over here, we had a bit of snow yesterday. It’s already vanished, but that was …
A few emails ago I asked around if you would be interested in a mini class about sketching mushrooms, because I had collected quite a few reference pictures and subjects that I brought in from the forest. Many of you replied enthusiastically, and so I started to work on the lessons. I’m happy to announce …
Every time I post one of these gouache landscape painting tutorials, I want to tell you about the personal project I recently started that’s connected with these landscape paintings, and why it’s really a project that I have been doing for over ten years, and what’s my special connection to the places I’m painting. But …
Late summer and early autumn is a good season for sketching mushrooms! Or late autumn, as it turns out. I’m still finding a lot of mushrooms these days, as autumn has been mild. With the first frost, they’re usually gone.When I was little, I used to go foraging mushrooms with my father, so I learnt …
Today I want to talk about the creative process and how to get it going, what a creative inventory is and why it’s important to have one and regularly fill it. Here’s a video version of this post where I do a bit of sketching while I talk about this topic: Starting or rekindling the …
I recently had the pleasure to talk with Bethan Burton on the Journaling with Nature podcast. We talked about my background, how I rediscovered sketching and found nature journaling, how I came to love and sketch birds, what it’s like to live in (and paint) the fairy tale landscapes of the Brothers Grimm, quitting social …
Today I have a really detailed sketching demo for you, I take you through the entire process of sketching a double page in my nature journal, from basic sketch to color. The video ended up being quite long, as I recreated a great autumn day outside in my sketchbook – encounters with ravens, starlings and …
After years of bird-watching, I have a pretty good grasp on song birds, but I still can’t tell a lot of birds of prey apart. They all look more or less majestic and have awesome brown and white-colored plumage. Starting this summer, I’ve set out to become better at learning what my local birds of …
After sharing a recipe for making walnut ink last time, I have a recipe for pomegranate ink. This ink will be a lovely light grey that darkens quite a bit when it dries. I tried this out a few years ago when I had done some research on how to make iron gall ink. Turns …
If you gather walnut husks in autumn, you can make your own walnut ink for sketching or calligraphy. This ink has a beautiful sepia-brown color and you can get very fine lines with it. In this post, I’ll show you a recipe for self-made walnut ink. I have a rest of walnut ink that I …
Here’s another gouache landscape tutorial for you. I’ve recorded this video quite a while ago (before the summer started), so I’d probably do a few things different now – I’d spend less times with individual brush strokes and focus more on the simplification of the entire scene. It’s still a good video to learn from, …