Your journal sketches and paintings can be as simple or as complex as you wish. If you’re relaxed and comfortable with no particular place to be, you can do a complete painting or a detailed field study, even in a smaller journal. Nature studies, details, a landscape in preparation for a larger painting, travel notes or whatever, your journal is the perfect place to keep these memories in one place.
Fabriano hot-pressed watercolor paper
Burnt Sienna, Cobalt Blue, Permanent Alizarin Crimson, Phthalo Blue, Transparent Yellow
9mm, 12mm and 15mm round and 12mm flat Niji waterbrushes
fine-tipped marker
I found a comfortable place to paint in the shade of a catalpa tree. I loved the sunny landscape across the park.
Catalpa trees make fascinating, orchid-like flowers. They had fallen from the tree and decorated the grass all around me, so I took a photo for later reference and made a detailed study of them on the spot.
I did a simple landscape at the top of my page, then sketched in the flowers as they looked at a bit of a distance, at middle left. I was interested in their growing habit on the stem and the shape of the leaves. I began painting them as carefully as I could, using my Niji waterbrushes.
Next, I added the close-ups of the flowers, working as accurately as I could from the real thing. When painting flowers on the spot, pay attention to details. Are the petals separate or are they attached like ruffles at the edge of a cone, as they are here? How many are there and how are they arranged?
Here I used Phthalo Blue and a pale wash of Cobalt Blue to model the flowers and added Transparent Yellow and a mix of Burnt Sienna
CATALPA TREE
Watercolor on Fabriano hot-pressed watercolor paper
7" × 5" (18cm × 13cm)
Finally, I added the unifying Phthalo Blue background wash and allowed the watercolors to dry. Then I added the notes in ink, using a fine-tipped marker. I wrote down the date, the sounds I heard, birds I saw nearby and other pertinent information, including my need for coffee! Every time I look at that page in my hand-bound journal, it really brings back that lovely May morning.