Hello, everyone. I'm a California landscape painter who is also a passionate sketchbook keeper. I do a lot of plein air and studio landscape painting, and my sketchbook is an invaluable tool in understanding nature's beautiful mysteries and complexities. Because time is so short when doing a painting on location, it helps to have an intimate understanding of how certain species of trees are put together, how reeds grow in a marsh or even how rocks look under different light conditions.
To start things off, above is a recent page from my Aquabee sketchbook. I like the paper because it's heavy enough to use some light washes without bleeding through the other side of the paper. This page is a study of a granitic rock cluster in the foothills of the Sierras, where we visited this spring. Rocks are often difficult to paint without them looking like piles of potatoes, so I did this study to explore the facets of the broken pieces, and to observe the reflected light in the shadows. When I'm
making paintings I paint either in oil, watercolor or pastel. But in my sketchbook I primarily made studies in watercolor and/or gouache, so that's what I'll usually be posting here. I paint every day and post my paintings on
my blog, A Creative Journey, if you want to see where some of the studies lead.
