The Sleeper's Den

I adore my Moleskine sketchbooks. There is just one frustration: I draw so badly in them. When you have a nice little sketchbook, it ought to be filled with nice art, you know? And my Moleskines are full of junk. Really. Seriously bad art. It is very embarrassing.

The fun thing about sketchbooks, and the reason why I use them, really, is that they keep sketches together. That means you can present them together, like a kind of portfolio that shows an evolution, and that when you have a good idea, you don't have to fear that it may get mislaid (which tends to happen to me :p). BUT if the contents of your sketchbooks are rubbish, well, that kind of defeats the purpose.

My latest mission, therefor, is to fill the remaining pages (and the backs of pages, haha) of my sketchbooks with Better Art, and/or with sketches that have some actual study value. This image should be seen in that context :).

Still Lord of the Ring-inspired: Galadriel wearing Nenya. Galadriel is easily my favourite Elf.



Lines were done with Faber-Castell PITT brush pens in four colours: Cinnamon 189, Raw Umber 180, Caput Mortuum 169 and Cold grey III 232. Watercolours used are Blockx (Lemon Yellow, Naples Yellow, Gamboge Yellow, Rose Madder, Rose Madder Deep, Cyanine Blue, Terre Verte, Hooker's Green), Winsor & Newton (Winsor Green, Raw Sienna, Cerulean Blue, Cadmium Orange) and Cotman (Sap green).

Size: 13 x 21 cm. The notebook paper has a weight of 200 g/m² and is made of 25% cotton. The notebook itself is actually one of the resons why projects can easily go wrong (for me): the book form does not allow me to use a light table, and after a few retries, the paper goes wonky. Which is totally normal, but it is also the reason why I use a light table for my 'free-standing' watercolour paintings.

NB: Crossposting from my DW account hasn't been working for ages. Bah.

I had to try out my new watercolours, of course. They are Blockx - an excellent Belgian brand of which up until last week I had never even heard. I bought 25 colours at a 50 % discount because, alas, the art shop in my street that used to carry them is going to stop selling Blockx :(. My guess is that they are just too expensive and in times of crisis they don't sell easily :/. They are really good though - certainly on equal footing with my beloved Winsor & Newton.



So today you get Elves with Blockx :-). I am rereading Lord of the Rings (last time I read it I was 12 or 13) - all because of the_winterwitch. There is a possibility that I'll be painting some LotR art for her, so I thought I'd better reacquaint myself with the material. I am much enjoying the reading, I have to say, but from an art-y point of view I am experiencing a few ... well, maybe not problems, but LotR isn't working the same way for me that the Harry Potter series and A Song of Ice and Fire do.
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