back from the holidays

Two weeks, and I mean two whole weeks of doing nothing but relax. The place isn't anything exotic or fancy, just the regular family house in the countryside, and old farm really, but I'm grateful for it. I took long walks in the woods, had too many cups of tea and painted a little... now it's hard to think about getting back to work!

Check my Flickr stream in a few days for the scans of the stuff I painted.

Vacation at last

This year has been pretty difficult at work, adjusting to a new office, new coworkers and duties, so I think I earned myself some vacation time.

I went to Paris!


Made this out of my beloved Muji notebooks and I had quite fun spattering white acrylic paint all over.


I went to the Louvre and did this quick sketch of François-Joseph Bosio's "Hercule combattant Achéloüs métamorphosé en serpent".
I didn't care for Hercules, never liked when I studied at school, but the snake was pretty amazing and I'm not happy I wasn't able to catch the details.
I sat there sketching and people walked by the statue without noticing it, then they wandered around to have a look at my notebook so they thought it must have been special and went back to take a picture of it.


My favourite place in Paris was Luxembourg Gardens, or "Jardin du Luxembourg".
Paris in spring is beautiful and especially the gardens are amazing. The Gardens are alive with people sunning themselves, running or engaging in a game of pétanques.
I did a quick sketch of this bronze statue because the bright green patina was really eye-catching among beautiful tulips and a flowering cherry tree in the background.
I got my palette here in Italy and it's made by Fome which makes many palettes for big brands (I think Sennelier used to have this version), it houses mainly Sennelier's paints and it's small but has lot of space for colours and mixing.

This is embarassing

The state of my bed right before tidying up and going to sleep.
I was trying to sort of some colours in my big watercolour box and making charts.

Taken with my mobile sorry for the quality of photo.
Now I really should go to sleep!

watercolour sets

I love to take and look at pictures of art supplies so I couldn't wait to take pictures when a friend on LJ asked me a question about watercolours :)

My watercolour sets:
- studio set artist quality Windsor & Newton Artists half pans and some Schmincke Horadam. It started a lot less full than now, some colours are old, some newer, and it keeps growing, I can't help because they are like candy!
- for travelling light and cheap student grade W&N Cotman set, best £9,95 spent ever. It's light and has three tiers of mixing surfaces. Switched Cobalt Blue with Prussian Blue, I really don't get why they included it if there was already Ultramarine (and Prussian is prettier), and threw away China White for Mauve.
- the tiny box is an empty candy tin with Neutral Tint, Payne Grey and Sepia useful if I want to work in monocrome or darken mixes from the sketch kit (you won't see black or white in any of my sets).

A folding 4 round brush and shortened 10 to fit in my pencil case (cut to size with pruning shears!)

And handmade sketchbook of course!

Birdbook

Crappy sketchbook I made with Fabriano Studio Watercolour 200gsm paper.

I needed a pocket sketchbook to carry on vacation, couldn't find a regular one to my liking so I made it using paper from a big pad I had lying around that wasn't much used anyway.

Can you believe it? There wasn't a single pocket sized sketchbook in my town! And I didn't have time to order it on the internet, it took me less time and pain to make my own and it was fun!

The cover is packing paper, binding tape and prints of stamps, I meant to use real stamps (I have tons) but when in need I couldn't find my stash. And sprayed with a couple of layers of matte acrylic transparent paint to avoid stains :)

Look inside