Owl

Lately I’ve been thinking about texture and surface. I always draw on thick cotton watercolour paper so that I can add washes anytime and know I’m not ruining a drawing. (Saunders Waterford and Arches Smooth are the two I go for.)

But when I’m stippling it’s a different experience than running a pencil or chalk across the surface of paper, and I’ve been feeling almost out of practice at drawing normally! Yesterday I decided to use my polychromos pencils which sit on my desk being ignored. Over the years I’ve bought some really nice art supplies and then freak out about using them or possibly wasting them so they end up just being decoration. How sad is that?

So with the last quarter of a watercolour sheet that has a green/grey wash on it, which was a good midtone to start with, I drew this owl. I kept it light, loose and was not wanting to get caught up in details like I do when I stipple. I kept the palette minimal, choosing mostly to draw basic highlights and only a bit of shadow and darker tones.

I loved drawing it. This piece of paper was softer than it should be due to the fact that I altered the sizing surface by applying bleach to the inked and water coloured layers. But even with the sizing affected it was such a joy to draw on.

Here are the pencils 👇

and the ones who were lucky enough to leave ‘desk decoration purgatory’ 👇

and here is the drawing 👇

I’m going to pop this onto my Etsy shop and see if it can find a home.

Thankyou for being here and reading this, I hope you have a great day. 🌞