Sketchbook Tour Winter 2022/23 – Botanical studies, landscapes, clouds

Welcome back to another sketchbook tour. Right now it seems like there’s nothing happening in my sketchbook at all – I’m busy with filming an online course (which means painting outside of the sketchbook), there’s an illustration project to finish, and I’m also still very slow – my health is only getting better in baby steps. But I don’t want to complain, I still found a few interesting pages from the last three months to share with you. My sketchbook remains a place I can always turn to when I need a bit of creative time, to explore ideas or just to unwind.

Here’s a video version of this post:

Sketchbook Tour Winter 2022/23 - Botanical studies, landscapes, clouds | Nature Journal

Watch this video on YouTube.

That illustration project I was talking about is about local species. Whenever I can, I like to do sketchbook studies for that, so the first entries today are botanical studies. Nature around here is still half-asleep at this time of the year, but these beautiful flower remind me of hiking in summer and exploring and finding interesting new plants. One of these, dittany (the pink one), has this wonderful fresh smell of orange if you touch it. I’ve read that it can actually catch fire in the sun due to the high content of essential oils, but I’ve never seen that. What I like to focus on in these botanical studies is everything I need later for the finished illustration: how the plant grows, leaf shapes, flowers from different perspectives, and if possible in different growth stages. I also like to include the habitat. Details of the flowers themselves are of course important to get right – it’s challenging to study those without the actual specimen around, since photos don’t always show everything. I’ll share a bit more from the project when it’s finished, my Patreon supporters already got a sneak preview.

One thing I love sketching in winter are birds. When it was really cold, we had fieldfares hanging out in the garden, feeding on lots of apples and sitting around like giant fluff balls – true borbs. It’s always a joy to draw those beautiful birds.

Another aspect I like about winter is that I can draw gnarly trees – with no leaves in the way you can really study how the branches grow and overlap. For this sketch, I worked with acrylic inks. You can use them directly from the bottle or diluted and apply them in layers. It’s very similar to watercolors, but the layers are waterproof when dry. I also showed the drawing process for this page in a recent video which features my thoughts about overwhelm and creativity.

Winter, for me, also has some of the most subtle and interesting color combinations, I explored that in several landscape sketches. On some days, the world is almost monochromatic, and colors appear subdued and like through an old lens.

We’ve also explored some wintery villages when it had minus degrees here, and I opted for taking photos instead of sitting down to sketch. But I sketched afterwards. This is one of the churches in the town of Warburg, which still has a lot of historical buildings intact. I love the architecture and old churches in general, and it’s nice to sketch some architecture.

On one of my walks I encountered galloway cows. They are smaller than your average cow, have tousled long fur and long horns, and they’re very friendly and chilled. Again it was so cold I just snapped a few photos and then sketched at home. Beautiful animals.

Another landscape sketch in which I used a mix of watercolor and ink. I grabbed one of my fountain pens which has non-waterproof ink in it, so the result were green blobs when I added water over it. Whoops. I like this spot and have painted it several times, I hope to return there in spring.

I’m currently filming a new, updated version of my course on painting clouds, so to get into the mood I painted a few different skyscapes. Very relaxing. I’ve also recently shared a few tips for painting clouds, in case you’re interested.

And the most recent page features a tiny moss (I love moss), and a branch with lichen on it, again done with a combination of ink and watercolor. Somehow these interesting colors appeared everywhere on that branch. On the opposite, there’s a branch with a nice lichen.
By the way, on that page you’ll see two amazing hashtags from Mastodon (my preferred open source social network): #mosstodon and #lichensubscribe. You can see my work on Mastodon here – it’s a non-commercial and ad-free place.

I wish I could have sketched more, but then I always think that and I’m grateful for the time I spent with my sketchbook. I hope you enjoyed this sketchbook tour. Keep your eyes open for my new course later this month, and also for a newsletter-only announcement this week.