Trip to The East Coast - Part 3: Landscapes (about half of them).

I will break this post into two as there are quite a few drawings and some of them I would like to annotate more than others. As always you can see larger image if you click on it.

This is one of my favorite sketches from the trip - I painted with gouache without any drawing underneath and added some lines with zig calligraphy pen mid-drawing when I thought that I might have to stop abruptly. But since I had some more time I added more gouache over the ink lines.

There two pages of sketches above started super quickly, using markers to put down large shapes and then most of details in the three-sketch page were added from photos and sketch on the right was completed on location - which shows that by having more time I get to a better contrast place with my sketches. You can see some of the gorgeous paper from my hand-made sketchbook as a border on the left sketch above. 

This was a very fast attempt to catch lightness of the lake behind darker but also more detailed trees in the front. I started with super fast layer of gouache used as watercolor but it was too wet to finish right away. And I lost both the light and freshness when I tried to pick it up on the way back to the car. I like some dynamic pencil lines though and I think dark green works really nice with the pumpkin orange and washed yellow with gray purple. 

Trip to The East Coast - Part 2: People, Birds, Animals and Apples

Here is a selection of sketches which will tell you about people that I met at airports, a porcupine that I met in the woods and lots of apples and animals that I found on a Pennsylvania farm. Oh - and birds - these were identified using my phone and drawn based on some images I found online in inaturalist and cornell bird id apps. 

Trip to The East Coast - Part 1 (Slow Road to Trimming My Tools: Part 2)

When I got my tickets to visit New York and Pennsylvania in late October, I knew that I would like to apply my "let's trim my tools" mindset to choosing what would go with me. In preparation, I looked at the sketches I did during my last year's trip, and also remembered that neither a temperamental flex nib fountain pen nor bottles of acrylic ink are good ideas. But my experience with acrylic inks gave me an idea to think about some tools to make large shapes super quickly and simply - for this, I took some highlighters and a couple of markers. And experience with the pen I love gave me an idea to bring only writing instruments that I know well and that bring me joy by sheer use of them (pentel pocket brush pen and zig calligraphy marker).  And for adding texture and details, I decided to select some pencils. My choice of colors was heavily influenced by the colors I saw in my last year's photos, and also the idea that I will need to have something that would work on a wet surface as well as on dry, be able to work as a super dark color, but also be able to cover something else to make it lighter. Neocolor II crayons in this set were playing the same role of "have to be able to cover marks made by other tools to transform them into something very different". A little gelatti gouache stick from Faber Castell was something that I recently picked up, and it worked in the same capacity (instant sky). Here is how my kit looked like:

and packed:

I wanted to have a gouache set with me, and it proved to be a source of joy on many occasions - both for making large shapes, being super quick, and also for bringing textures and layering colors. Two waterbrushes were enough for this particular trip - one flat, one round, both capable of many marks, especially if you control the flow of water (for those little packable towels that Uma Kelkar got me into are invaluable!). My minimal gouache palette lives in a Pocket Palette from Art Tool-Kit and here are colors (addition of lilac was last minute and somehow I did not use it) 

I was also in a rare position when I was about to finish my sketchbook number 161 - so what do I want from my next sketchbook was a question I asked myself first. I knew that I would not have time for a proper watercolor painting, so paper had to be something that would work with a wide range of materials but would withstand some rough treatment. And since I knew that I wanted to pack light, I thought about making this a special sketchbook - about this trip only. In my collection of sketchbooks, there are a few hand-made, and this particular one I made under the guidance of my friend Gay Kraeger some time ago. Embarrassingly long ago, if I am honest. I liked it so so much that I frequently opened it up and considered, but was never sure what would be a good enough occasion to start it... I am working on transforming the "it is too good to be used" mindset, so this was a perfect moment to have something special for this trip.

Size: 5.5" x 7.5" Paper: hot press Fabriano Artistico 140 lbs.  

I also had my pocket printmaking toolset with a home-made sponge dauber and inks in a little tower, but I used both very little. Thinking back, I think I did not pack these tools into a separate bag that would be easy to locate in my backpack - something to think about in the future. 

I will make another post with some notes on what I missed and comments on some thinking behind my color choices to remember for the future and will add link here. 

Slow Road to Trimming My Tools: Part 1

After some travels this summer, I made this sketch note to myself:

I've been there before and was usually able to remove extra stuff within one "re-packing" session. But this time, I noticed a resistance on many levels. I had so many things in my backpack I felt a need to separate different drawing tools into different themes/bags/boxes, and then I was not sure what was it what box and what exactly I liked or used the last time? And I kept getting some glimpses about "that great tool that once was amazing," where is it? After some time, I realized that I've spent more time looking at my tools and putting them from one bag into another than actually drawing, and that is when I knew that I was in real trouble. Because now I had more bags in front of me than before, and zero willpower to make any choices about what to use in my sketch. I ended up not drawing on that day (apart from the following doodle, which I did on my iPad after I upgraded to procreate, and saw all the new brushes, which did not help with the previous situation).

So I stopped and decided to look at what people are doing, talk to friends about this, give this transformation some time but make a log of what approaches I am trying, what is working and what is not and get myself out there sketching more. And I decided to share the process as I go - because I am sure I am not the only one and because this way I will have something to refer to.

First, I asked myself what are some of my favorite tools and what kinds of marks I am after in them. So I cleaned and refilled my Ackerman Pen. Here is a page created with it right after. 

This en is not an easy character to deal with - but I remembered that when I make it work, it brings me joy. Testing out what marks I can make and what I really liked, how different holds gave me different feels, was the most useful part of this experiment.

Next I took my Pilot Parallel Pen with a modified nib (I cannot believe I never made a post about making it! - not to self: make one!). So I took this pen to an outing and drew with it almost 100% blindly. I made a sketch I enjoy looking at even right now - because I remember looking at the scene without breaking eye contact for a longer than usual time and I remember this time and scene so vividly! 

And then a friend gave me a bunch of super bright acrylic inks, and I found one more to complement the trio, and I painted over this sketch - I had so much fun, I kept bringing those inks with me to a couple of outings after this. When I asked myself why, I realized that with these inks I can mix colors only by overlapping them on the page directly, and I can paint super fast, too. There are very few choices - I have only three bottles and a big brush.  

I tried overlapping these inks with other tools and made more notes:

I think the most useful part was actually writing down what I like and then trying to use that one particular thing on the next sketch I had a chance to do. I hoped to apply this thinking to my packing for the travel  but ended up with too many art supplies (as you can guess flying with acrylic inks or a leaky fountain pen in tow is a bit involved). So I took a different approach to choosing materials for the trip - and hope to tell you more about it in the next post!

On My Table: Beginning of November 2025

First of November found me at the table, sorting through my sketches done on a trip to the East Coast of the USA. We saw some amazing fall colors, had a chance to connect with dear family members, and met a porcupine. I am going to do a set of posts about the trip, but for now, all of this stuff was dominating my table, as you can see. 

I took a very reasonable set of tools with me on purpose (way more than I used to take at some point but compared to recent trends it was very reasonable) and I missed some things on the trip, so one of the first things I did after returning is I made a list of things that I was reaching for and now finding and tried to find exactly what would be "that" - hence the swatching of all the "browns" and search for grays and greens. 

And I kind of missed the sketch that ended up as a gift (I very rarely never tear pages from my sketchbooks - but this was a special occasion. And I am very happy that it ended up being a gift to this particular family member! But since I missed it and a story that it created - I drew it from a photo that I took :)

Reading Notes: New Collection of Sketchbooks!

Just in case, if you did not know this about me,  I am a huge fan of sketchbooks :) I enjoy flipping through sketchbooks of other people when I have a chance (Sketcherfest was a great example of where one might do this for a whole day!). And I always look for books that are essentially collections of other people's sketchbooks. Be that one artist or many under one cover - they are always a waterfall of inspiration and motivation. I have quite a few in my own library - it all started with Julia Rothman's "Drawn In" and then my collection grew quite a bit. 

So when I saw that two artists whose work I follow closely (Studio Takeuma and Tom Froese) were featured on the cover of this collection, I hunted it down through the library (hurray for libraries - the fact that you can get almost any book for free is one of the things I will never stop cheering for and be amazed at! Support your libraries - if you are in the USA, the American Library Association is a great source of information on how to support them - especially during uncertain times like right now, when book bans are on the rise and library funding is being cut. 

So, the book is "Sketched Out: Artistic Sketchbooks and Journals Unveiled," and it is a collection of sketches from artists. There are some interview questions and short information too. I knew before (and admire) some of the artists in this book: Jenny Adam and Marina Grechanik. But many were new, and in these days when algorithms pollute your instagram, it became especially hard to track down new artists. I have a system to follow what people are doing (and avoid looking at the stream that is being pushed at me), but it works for people who are already in my cone of interest, and I was glad to add some names to my list. 

Here are some photos from the book (click on the image to see it large).