W&N watercolour in hand-made sketchbook with satin-finish linen paper.
Gemsbuck (Oryx gazella) under a lone tree in the Kalahari (South Africa). Done from my imagination.
I’ve got this little hand-made sketchbook with a satin-finish linen paper and I can sit for hours churning out these little 7″ × 4″ (17cm x 10cm) watercolour sketches. I find it totally calming and it also satisfies my need to fiddle! This paper is very unforgiving, can’t take pencil marks, so you can’t do any preliminary drawing and also no erasing. The paper (or linen) virtually disintegrates under an eraser. Once you put colour to paper, that’s it! But it does allow for a lovely flow of the paint, which I enjoy immensely as I never know exactly what I’m going to end up with.
