It took me quite a bit to create this video. I hope you enjoy the tour!
I wrapped up my 100 day project in May, but then summer activities came in, I had a lot of travel planned and I decided to postpone the sketchbook tour.
However, it wasn’t the mere lack of time, I wanted to give myself space for reflection on how the project influenced my practice and what do the results mean for my art in the future.
I started the 100 day project with a goal to create 100 mini watercolour landscapes in a sketchbook and paint as often as I can, but not necessarily every single day.
I wanted to improve my skills with watercolour, start creating more regularly, learn how to simplify a busy landscape scene and how my hand naturally moves when painting. I am happy with the results and with the progress I made. Joining the project helped me to improve my skills with colour, composition and value. And I already have some new ideas for the project next year!
At the same time by the end of the project I took a look at the landscapes and realised that this is not exactly the direction I want to go further in my practice and that I still don’t completely understand which direction I should go. I have been always drawn to creating more loose, expressive and even abstracted pieces using unlikely colours and mixed media. My favourite pieces from the project are the most loose and expressive, using fewer brush strokes, with watercolours bleeding into each other and the details reduced to a necessary minimum, so that it still reads like a landscape.
It takes time to figure out your style and these 100 landscapes have been a necessary step towards developing a style that feels more like “me”. That is why this summer I started to explore several directions and experiment a lot in my sketchbooks with supplies, styles and techniques. I am planning to write about elements of style and finding your style in some upcoming posts, so stay tuned!
Thank you for being here! Feel free to share this post with an art friend and I’ll be happy to hear from you in the comments!
Until next time!
Lisa
Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/hartzmann/clear-sky
License code: Q3GX9WZOUKRKAJPS
Sketchbook Tour 4