A Sketchbook-Practice: Creating a Color Story

How are you doing today?

One of the ways I try to stay creative is through a sketchbook practice -- filling pages of my sketchbook with drawings or paintings of mundane observations. 

This is a plain sketchbook made of watercolor paper. Like many of you, I get intimidated by the blank page but I've learned to get some inspiration from other artists who show their work on social media, through their websites, and even in printed material:

This is an old issue of Uppercase Magazine. I love it because it's "for the creative and the curious" and its pages are abundant with methods of creative expression.

Lilla Rogers is an illustrator-entrepreneur and her studio represents artists and authors worldwide. She writes regularly for Uppercase Magazine and in this article, she suggests making a color story from foraged objects.

This is my collection of foraged items, randomly picked up throughout the year: seashells, a variety of flowers that I put in my flower press, leaves, and a feather.  I like how the colors come together, from the muted grays to the vibrant violet and orange. Now, I've created my very own color story. It will dictate the colors that I'll use on a painting. The limited colors might be a constraint, but many times limitations can make us more creative, don't you think? 

The first thing I do is to swatch the colors based on the items forming my color story. I use  watercolor and colored pencils and I apply these directly on my sketchbook page.

I drew these squares that will serve as frames for mini paintings. Breaking down the page into smaller chunks will make the process less intimidating.

Just blobs, shapes and shading as my first exercise. 

As you can see, I've filled the mini frames with my version of abstract art. It doesn't have to be perfect and nobody needs to see it. It's practice and who knows where the color story and the sketches might lead to? Maybe a repeating pattern for fabric or gift wrapping paper? A t-shirt design or even a brand logo. This is just the beginning.

And that is how I turned a blank page from blah to TADA!

If you'd like more crafty ideas delivered to your inbox, please subscribe here.