Co-Swatch Sesh January

WE’RE BACK! It’s PLAYTIME!

Swatches of the day. Base of soft pastels, quickly obliterated by colour pencils.

Today was our first Co-Swatch Sesh of the year, and it felt like a real ‘start’ to 2025. What a lovely session!

• Huge welcome to

  Orla Stevens
  for joining us - the queen of outdoor sketching! Check out her wonderful YouTube channel here and her Substack here. Thanks for the tip about dipping soft pastels straight into water!

• Thanks to

  Melissa
  for giving me the idea to use my soft pastels with water in the first place. I actually quite liked the result, even though I worked over the top with colour pencils, obliterating most of the lovely texture. 🤣

• Thanks to

  Louise Rigg
  for the genius idea of giving each sketchbook a name, and using her Tarot cards to inspire the name. LOVE THAT!

• As usual we talked about Pith Supply sketchbooks, because I can’t stop. We also mentioned Strathmore Mixed Media as a more robust alternative when working with lots of wet media.

• Lenore Grubinger
  hot tip when working with soft pastels: use a tilted surface, and allow the dust to fall down onto a wet towel, catching all the dust. SO GOOD.

• Tara mentioned KUM sharpeners can be purchased through Splendith in the Netherlands.

• This is the sharpener I mentioned that I love for use with Luminance pencils.

• Thanks to

  J Siva
  for joining and the lovely supportive chat.

• I’m influencing Orla to buy the half pan Landscape Set by Unison, because I am sure she will be able to make magic with it!

• Great to also have Natasha Cross,

  Art by Cleopatra
  and everyone else who joined.

If I missed any other things we chatted about, drop them in the comments. Cookie recipes welcome!! See you next month!