Testing new art supplies in my sketchbook: Happy, wintery little girl

For Christmas (2022) I got some lush presents: the full 150-piece set of Prismacolor Premier colour pencils (from my love) and 12 watercolour half-pans, mostly sparkly 😊️, handcraftde by Le Pigmentarium (from my Mum)! The watercolour came with 4 additional quarter-pans, one of which I really like – unfortunately (or fortunately? 😅️) it was not labelled so I can’t buy more…

I soon began to swatch the watercolours! For once, it’s an easy way to try them out (without having to think of something to paint with them), and also I’m finding increasingly useful to have a reference of my colours (maybe it means I’m starting to have too many 😁️).

For the pencils on the other hand, there are so many that I thought I’d rather jump into a drawing rather than making swatches, which felt like a somewhat tedious prospect. Still I want to do it sometime soon, as I feel I’m not making the most of these wonderful pencils, not seeing how they really look like on paper, and unable to remember so many nuances 😅️

Drawing something without a definite purpose is something I increasingly find I’m not good at 😏️

Still I managed to decide to draw a character inspired by my piece “Snowfall at Troll Lake”, also in a wintery setting (not original, but why not ;))

I’m quite happy that I made myself complete this little painting/drawing, chipping away at it little by little (as you can see by the dates on the top right corner of the page, which are all the days I worked on it :)). I also like the result though it may be a bit too garish 😁️ – but that’s the advantage of making something with no other purpose than trying out those shiny paints! 😊️

I especially liked adding the details of textures with the pencils: knitted wool, tweed, woven fabric, hairs and more!

I’m still fretting about allowing comments on this blog (fear of spam ;)), but if you have any thoughts on art, art supplies or writing about it, I’d be happy to hear from you!