Creating in my Collage Sketch Book

You may have seen my earlier posts on creating a painted paper collage sketchbook

here and here.

In this post, I'm sharing a few photos of the process and including the reference photos I took at Phipps Conservatory.

If you're inspired, I hope you'll make drawings and paintings from my reference pics!

I've always loved this little statue, and especially delighted in the sash of dried flowers she's now decorated with.  I started with a pencil drawing on a blank page.

I added in watercolor greens to the background, with yellow-green first.  When the first wash of green dried, I mixed a dark green with phthalo blue and burnt sienna.  I added a touch of permanent blue violet to make extra dark shadows.

It was fun to make shadowy leaves and then to use the shadows to "carve" lighter green leaves (bottom right area).

With the background done, I mixed a pale violet for the shadows on the statue.  

I wanted to show that she was made of stone, so I kept the colors cool and desaturated by mixing permanent blue violet with a touch of yellow ochre.  The yellow muted the purple's brightness.

I splashed in Azo yellow, permanent rose and permanent blue violet to the sash for the dried flowers.  I added a few touches of the warm Azo yellow to the background to unify the page.

I drew these orchids in with Posca paint markers.

Here is some gorgeous foliage with striking patterns.  I used a Stabilo All pencil for the dark markings on the leaves.

Here's a yellow orchid I drew with Neocolor II watercolor crayons and the Stabilo All pencil

The bold magenta color of these begonias caught my eye.  It was fun to mix the Posca marker colors to try to recreate that shade of pink. I love how the green from the painted paper page shows through in spots & contrasts with the pink.

I love the gnarly trunk and twisted limbs of this bonsai tree.  But there was very little contrast between the tree and the background.

I used the filters function on my phone's photo editor and turned the color photo black and white, then turned up the contrast.

I used both photos as references for this drawing.

Adding in the trunk first with Neocolor II watercolor crayons, I created foliage with Posca paint markers.

I found that having these painted papers made the process of drawing so much less "scary."  I realized that fear of the blank page is a real force holding me back from creating. 

Splashing paint on paper in a messy, no-pressure way is fun in itself, AND it helps me to jump into drawing faster.  Win-win!

I hope you give this technique a try!

Happy Creating!