As expected this week was even crazier that the one before and I really had to dial back with my art practice. It was painful, but I didn’t want to feel stressed and rushed. I still managed to find time to create something each day, but I had to cut some things out of my weekly routine and now can’t wait to catch up when life calms down a bit.

Pastel:

Only one practice this week, for @artofpastels challenge. It was my first time to draw a plant (I think) in pastel and it was a challenge indeed. I feel like I did my best, but want to become better.

Same goes for markers– I am finally done with all the challenges and the final drawing was  a Valentine. I am glad I got to have this intense marker practice lately, I feel I refreshed my skills and scaling back felt right.

Colored Pencils will most likely be my material of choice for the rest of Natalie Ratkovski’s sketchflashmob, perhaps, not exclusively, but predominantly. This way I will have at least one practice per week with pencils and hopefully get better. This week’s theme is “Feathers”

Embroidery! I am having more and more fun with it. I only spend about 10 minutes each day on it (which equals a flower or a critter), yet the picture grows. Embroidery is very meditative and I am looking forward to my 10 minutes of calm every day.

For 52 weeks illustration challenge  I went with digital painting again. I use iPad Pro and Apple Pencil. The theme was “Botanical”, so here’s an attempt at an eggplant

Watercolor adventures were many this week. I drew for Doodlewash challenge. Turtle and matches are my favorites, but really I enjoyed drawing all of these. This is a wonderful exercise, truly. Each drawing takes me no more than 30 minutes usually as they are not large and I don’t go into great detail, but I get to practice different techniques and go outside of my comfort zone from time to time.

My large watercolor work this week was a lavender patch. I drew it from a picture I took last summer at a garden and it never fails to cheer me up. Drawing it made waiting for spring more bearable.

One more watercolor I did this week is small, but rather special. It is my first on location drawing of this year. And it was done in our most favorite place in our part of town- Roxborough State Park. It isn’t a very large park, but so so beautiful.

I drew in a Moleskine pocket-sized sketchbook, the paints are my new Winsor & Newton 12 color field kit. A small note on the kit- I love the colors, so vibrant and pleasant to work with, however pans do not stay inside it and inevitably slide out, I understand why it was done, and appreciate that in the future I can maybe pack a different palette in the case, but for now it’s not very comfortable. The waterbrush isn’t great. I will probably carry my Pentel brush to use wit hit. Otherwise I am very happy with it.

I continued to explore folk art theme and made a drawing with gouache

And last but not the least, my illustrated journal 

Next week should be  calmer and I am looking forward to more art practice, especially paper cutting for which I have so many ideas already!

Until then, hope everyone has a wonderful week!

Love,

Anya

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