Here we are at the end of May and on the edge of what I think of as the start of summer. The official start of summer isn’t until summer solstice, which is June 20th this year—and as far as how things feel, it’s been pretty darn summery here for weeks, I’d say—but for all that, “summer” for me is “June, July, and August”. Honestly, on the Gulf Coast most of May and September are summer, too, in my opinion, but I try to hold on to the illusion of spring until June, and by September you can sense the approach of fall in the quality of the light, if not in the temperatures, and that makes a difference.
…I’m rambling. Anyway, good-bye May 2025. Let’s hope for a mild, well-behaved summer!
Rolling Hills
I don’t remember what gave me the idea for this sketchbook page—not that it’s ground-breaking or particularly special—but it was fun!
It starts with just some exaggerated hills in various shades of green, with a patch of sky blue at the top.
Next, I added the “bodies” (everything but the roofs) of houses in white, scattered across the hills. I started with white acrylic marker, but it wasn’t really opaque enough, so I added some reconstituted gouache dried on a ceramic palette. (That stuff comes in handy!)
Oh, and I put in a few small, puffy clouds, too.
Next came the fun part of adding details—trees and roofs in acrylic marker, outlines, windows, and doors in black ink pen.
This was simple, but fun to do. If you feel like putting more effort into it, you could doodle in entire villages, castles, dragons, roads, factories, windmills, city skylines, rivers, lakes, farms, or whatever else takes your fancy.
(Maybe I’ll make another with more of a variety of details…)
Doodle Birds
YouTube artist Diane Antone paints birds like this—if you take a loose interpretation of the words “like this”. Hers turn out better than these did, but it was still something to do on an evening when I didn’t feel up to anything challenging.
I used a silver acrylic paint marker for a a couple of details on the birds and in the centers of the flowers in the background. The silver is pretty in real life, but it’s difficult to photograph and tends to look either white or grey.
Stack 'Em Up (Again)
I was trying some more DIY granulating watercolor mixes and ended up with enough of a few mixes to do more than swatches—so I decided to try more of the stacked stones (mentioned last time).
My stone stacks could use more practice, but I do love the way the granulating paint looks:
After they dried, I added some textural details:
Doodles
This one started with a little dried paint on the palette—leftovers from painting the hills in the picture further up the blog post. I watered them down to extend them, then filled a page with random shapes. (Same thing I’ve described many times before.)
That was last night. This morning, while I was waking up, I tried some floral doodles using one of those flexible nib pens I mentioned last time. It’s a Zebra Pen Zensations Brush Pen with a medium brush tip. It was less than $2 on Amazon when I bought it, now up to a little over $3. Still a good price if you want to try this type of pen without spending much. I don’t think I’m making the best use of the thick-and-thin effect you can get with the brush tip, but it’s a nice pen, and I’m enjoying trying something different.
I briefly considered adding more watercolor to the doodles, but I think I’ll leave it like this for now. The ink in the Zebra pen is supposed to be water-resistant, though, so that might be something to try, at some point.
Swatches, Splotches
I don’t know why I’m including this photo, really, but I guess I just like random splotches of paint. These aren’t even my latest paint-mixing swatches. (I’m labelling those to remind me of what I did, in case there’s a recipe worth returning to.) When I was done mixing for the day, I cleaned the palette by splodging shapes onto a scrap of paper. I think they may be useful later on for collage.
Reading & Listening
The Sundial, by Shirley Jackson
I was reading The Sundial, by Shirley Jackson. I had been under the impression that it was a novella, but it’s not quite that short, and I felt my progress was too slow—so I switched over to an audiobook version, which is easier going. I’m not sure I’ll like how it ends, but at least it feels worth finishing.
The September House, by Carissa Orlando
This was recommended by a “BookTuber” in a list of books about haunted houses. That’s all I knew about it, going in. I’m only just getting started, but so far it’s been surprisingly original. I don’t think I’ve read anything quite like it, before, and it’s very readable and entertaining. I’m curious to see where it’ll go!
Mars Reborn (Moon People 2), by Dale M. Courtney
Donald and I read the first of these along with the 372 Pages We’ll Never Get Back podcast. After finishing their current book a little ahead of time, we decided on a whim to pick up the second in the series. Bearing in mind that 372 Pages is a “bad books” podcast (or at least a “books we don’t expect to like” podcast), I think you’ll understand what I mean when I say that this book has elicited howls of laughter on more than one occasion. The minimalist approach to punctuation and a complete lack of quotation marks in a dialogue-heavy novel can make this a challenge to get into, but the laughs have been well worth the effort.
