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Outdoors/Landscape Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Cactus on Carlson

Cactus on Carlson

Pencil and Kremer Pigments watercolor in 9×12 Aquabee sketchbook
(click image to enlarge, select All Sizes)
Why am I painting in a sketchbook instead of on watercolor paper? I asked myself this a hundred times while I was painting this afternoon (well maybe 20 times). In my watercolor class Saturday I emphasized the importance of using good paper, especially when one is learning to paint, since it will give better results, and will assist you in making beautiful washes and glazes instead of impede you.

I should listen to my own advice! Today I wanted to paint these cacti I photographed on a walk last week. I was able to compose and paint the image I had in mind, but it would have been a lot nicer had I used watercolor paper. The Aquabee Super Deluxe Sketchbook has decent paper for watercolor sketching, but so what! I have a drawer full of watercolor paper I could have used.

Did I go for the sketchbook instead of good paper because I like filling up sketchbooks or because knowing I’m doing a “sketch” is a lot less intimidating than making a “painting” and if I’m using “real” watercolor paper, it must be a painting, and if it’s a painting it has to be good? (erckkk–that’s just plain stupid!)

Before I started blogging and sketchbooking, I only painted on good watercolor paper. But I also worked on paintings for weeks before declaring them finished. I had a belief that a painting done in one afternoon wasn’t a “real” painting. I’m putting things in quotes because these concepts aren’t ones I want but seem to have and don’t know why or when I internalized them.

I can do this one again on watercolor paper, and maybe I will. But I’m also going to start painting on good paper again unless I know for sure I just want to do something small and quick. I miss the lovely texture and flow.

cactus-photo

Here’s the original photo I was working from. When I first saw the cacti they were glowing in the setting sun but by the time I got to them with my camera the sun was just about gone so the light wasn’t great.

12 replies on “Cactus on Carlson”

the cacti are simply amazing so much more alive that the ref. photo. i love the colors 😀

for me too there always seems to be the pressure of churning out better or equal to whatever has been bench marked, in your mind as your best. i now put up most of what i make to avoid getting stuck. but that feeling is there 😦

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I really like this Jana – lovely colours. I appreciate your dilemma about paper. But I think that poor paper can help us to have a less perfectionist attitude which can free us up to be loose, free and more productive. Being perfectionist prevented me from producing anything at all for about 16 years. Somebody else on EDM – mitha I think, had to do an art college exercise of drawing with ink and a stick and I thought the results looked tremendous.

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Bright, colorful — LOVELY, Jana –!! I love the composition too! Re your words — i’m tending lately to go the OPPOSITE way — more toward sketching and LESS of finished work … and I’m enjoying it more…. While i’m still struggling to find ‘my style and preferences,’ I have more and more to learn in less and less time (work has been a BEAR lately) … I’m trying to let go of ‘perfect’ and trying to enjoy the spontaniety and FUN of the act of sketching …. for ME …for my journals (which I tend to love) and for focusing on the moment …. I may never get to be a ‘painter’ in the formal sense of the word … but mercy, I had better begin to enjoy the process!!! LOL Hugs!

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Jana, I like the complementary colors in this. I’m going to have to disagree with the definition of a painting needing a lot of time to be a real painting (and I see you’re rassling with that definition, too.) If that were the case there would be no plein air, among other styles. At watercolor workshops I’ve been to in the last few years, the painters often did stunning demos in an hour or so – beautiful works filled with emotion, color and style. But a different style from thoughtfully rendered works that take weeks to build up with many layers. There’s room for all, I think, and I am attracted to all of them for different reasons.

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I look like people who pierced the flower to the hair. Humorous.
The surprise was pierced from me by blue of the background.
It introduces it to a symmetric composition.
Unique work.

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Thanks everyone.

Karen, I love plein air painting too, so obviously I need to change that tune in my head. I think I need to get a big painting started so I can be doing both quick ones and longer paintings. I noticed that your recent “sketchbook” watercolors are done on watercolor paper–are they handmade? Maybe that’s the trick–to make my own sketchbooks so that the paper I’m using is the size I want in the shape I want and is on good paper and it’s in the sketchbook, which I like filling and having books of paintings instead of just sticking them in my flat files.

Julie and Lin, I agree that anything that helps us to loosen up and let go of perfectionism is a good thing. But not using good paper I’m realizing is like not using good paint or good brushes. It can reduce the pleasure of the experience and that’s the whole point, anyway, to enjoy the process.

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Jana, you are funny! I was yowling about the same thing tonight when I was painting in my sketch book, AGAIN! I came to the conclusion that I do like it because it is the right size (heaven forbid I tear the paper to the right size!) and it is cheap, I think part of it is the PLAY factor of the sketchbook, too.

The colors in this are stunning! I love the composition, too!!

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I LOVE this. Everything about it — the color, the composition (symmetrical enough to catch the eye, assymetrical enough to hold it – ha!), the energetic brush strokes near the top — everything about this makes me happy. And your story made me think, for some reason, about Picasso running out of canvasses and painting on the corrugated cardboard packaging they came in. Creative energy has a life of its own, no matter what it’s painted on 🙂

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Hey Jana,
I haven’t looked at your site for a while and got the pleasure of seeing a lot at once.
I love the cactus! (I think you remember my fondness for cactus paintings.) These are spectacular! Standing up so tall and proud of their showy flowers. I like the way you painted them in the middle of their growth, without seeing where they grow from. Great colors, too.

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