Quick Sketches

Here are a few quick sketches from last week - I have a slight backlog and I'm trying to catch up. Even though I've been trying to simplify things and move to just a single sketchbook ... well, that hasn't happened. The dinner sketches I recently posted were from my relatively new Handbook - which was the intended 'single sketchbook.' But the sketches in this post are from the Moleskine (5" x 8" watercolor). And I'm also using 9" x 12" pads of drawing paper and watercolor paper for larger drawings (will post some of those soon). So if anything I've just added to the confusion by adding the Handbook. Well, it's not really confusion. It's just a hassle sometimes to tote all this stuff around ... or, if I leave one of these books/pads at the apartment, then I always regret not having it with me. Not a big problem, I know, but these are the things that occupy the mind of a sketcher. The first one here, of the Piazza di Spagna, was another attempt at using watercolor as a sketch medium - i.e., not doing any sketching with pencil or pen and then watercolor, but just doing the sketch directly in watercolor. The second sketch, of a beautiful little space just off the Via Margutta, was done with a Derwent 'Chocolate' colored pencil (one of my students asked if it was made with real chocolate), and the last one - at the Villa Giulia - is the Lamy Safari, Lexington Gray ink, and watercolor. It was a nice day of touring with my students and sneaking in a few quick sketches along the way. I'm having good fun mixing it up with media over here!