Small studies painted with 90% watercolour and a little white Gouache. The white Gouache just helps for a few opaques and highlights and you can veer away from the more traditional watercolour technique of leaving your white highlights as untouched paper. Trying to get back into the flow of regular daily painting and watercolour is very easy to just pick up and dive right into. I have oil paintings on the go but it takes a little bit more cognitive load and resistance to get into that process.

Watched Pet Sematary 1989 again recently and was quite struck by the face of Judd Crandall aka Fred Gwynne aka Herman Munster. Those Zelda scenes still creep me out. Quite often I need a bit of escapism from this crazy old techno future we find ourselves in and a slightly crappy 80’s/90’s movie seems to hit just the right spot. I’m working with oils at the moment and this horrific thing keeps happening whereby I think something’s starting to look pretty decent so I take a photo.

Close ups crops of the Shelby brothers from Peaky Blinders. I painted these lads in oils & colour pencil on paper. I think I’ve finally excepted that you can quite reasonably paint with oils on paper in a sketchbook. Sometimes it can feel like a big block of resistance - the idea that we have to stretch, prime and prepare a surface or canvas for working with oil. It’s not really the case.

Sketchbook stuff in blue pencils Related Head Practice Rockwell Sketchbook Studies 2023-07-16 Sketchbook Stuff

More head studies in Krita. I think of this kind of thing as digital sketchbook work. Space seemed to be the way to go for experimenting with a brighter colour palette. Related 2023-08-19 Head Practice Girl Study in Krita

Head practice. I’ve been having a tough time with hair-do’s and beards. I can get absolutely lost in them sometimes and never feel like the painting is finished. Much like real hair do’s I suppose, you’ve got to set a time limit on how long you can fiddle around with it and then just move on and get out the house. Related Girl Study in Krita The North Water Rockwell Sketchbook Studies