Sunday 28 May 2017

Sunday Sketches: Colour swatches and butterflies

Up until now, I've done paint colour swatches, from my different travel palettes, on pages spread out among various sketchbooks.  This can be a bit of a pain when trying to remember which palette swatch was in which sketchbook. Well, I had a light-bulb moment this weekend and decided to dedicate just one sketchbook to keep all the swatches in one place. Duh! Why didn't I think of that before?

These are some of my paint palettes but I will also swatch up my watercolour pencils and crayons.

I've made a start. This will make it so much easier for me in the future.

Kohinoor set

The Sennelier Aqua Mini set

When I was painting up these swatches, I noticed a weird odour in the air — like something was burning but not wood. I went outside and saw smoke rising up maybe a block or two away...

It quickly developed into this...the smoke was very thick and black

We heard sirens so felt safe knowing the fire brigade was on the way.  I got chatting with our neighbour and we wondered what it could be. I thought burning rubber? My neighbour thought it might be chemical. The odour did have a chemical-like tinge to it but I guess we will never know. It was put out very quickly whatever it was.

So back to my art desk I went...

For Sunday Sketches this week, I added another butterfly to the spread in my Moleskine watercolour notebook — getting there slowly.

Close up of today's efforts. I used the Sennelier watercolours as well as some Derwent coloured pencils to strengthen the colours.

I should be able to fit a couple more on the page

Sunday Sketches is hosted by talented illustrator, Alexandra Macvean.  Feel free to come along and join us each week. To see the work of other participants for this week, click HERE.

I hope you have all enjoyed a lovely weekend.

15 comments:

  1. I really love the way you did the swatches, drawing a pic of the palette. Great way to remember which is which! And there is something so fun about creating swatches with a new set of paints!

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  2. Beautiful butterflies, glad the fire was contained!

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  3. Love those palette charts! Mine are nothing fancy, just a card that fits in the palette lid. Your butterflies are so beautiful, and don't they have some fabulous names?

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  4. beautiful page of butterflies and love the color swatch pages too. Great idea to put the swatches all in one notebook.

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  5. They are lovely butterflies or are they moths.
    Merle.........

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  6. love the of sketching the palettes and putting the colours where they are on the palettes :D they make great sketch pages :)

    hopefully there isn't anymore fires because that looks really dark :(

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  7. Gosh, a fire is always a fright.
    Your work is amazing! I am so humbled by the excellent art I see!

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  8. Love your butterfly and moth sketches. You are very tidy with your paints, mine are all in big messy pile with lots of dried out tubes.

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  9. Beautiful butterflies ~ Wonderful creations and love how you got so organized with your paints ~ keeps it simple and gives you more time to create ~ thanks,

    Happy Week to you ~ ^_^

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  10. I hope whatever was burning dind't cause too much damage.

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  11. Aha! That is part of my organizing plan for the studio--one of the big projects! To make swatches of all the paints, pencils, crayons, and ink pads...all of them. The ink pads swatches will probably be separate from the other art supplies, but not sure. I do want them all together.

    Love your butterflies!! Did you ever find out what the odd smelling fire was from?

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  12. What a smart idea with the paints! I love the butterflies that you're painting, they are so beautiful!

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  13. I LOVE your palettes and color swatches!! That smoke looks really scary, I'm glad it didn't last long. xx

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  14. What a fun post, Serena. I love the color swatches. Those are so fun to do! And your butterflies are so pretty. :) Thank you for sharing with us! x

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  15. was not sure at first what swatches was. Made me thnk of watches :) But I think I understand. Seem like a good idea. Love your butterflies :)

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