Watercolor Travels

 

One of my outings in San Diego was a rather long walk to Dick Block Art Supply in Little Italy. They've got everything in this place, just like online, but you get to see it and hold it in your hand before buying it. I bought a new to me type of bendable color pencil from Derwent, their new Chromaflow line. I was just going to buy some more watercolor pencils, but I reminded myself I have plenty of those already so I really wanted something different.  This review was the reason. 

The four mile walk was lovely, but definitely a bit too long and I'm still dealing with a bad blister on my foot, but that was because I was wearing new tennis shoes (d'oh!).

The new sketch pen in grey from Windsor Newton worked really well, even on the toothy watercolor paper. I sketched the view looking out our hotel window.

The new watercolor brush worked very nicely, it had a smaller brush tip than the one I usually work with, but that was fine with the smaller images I working on. I tend to use watercolor pencil the most, so I had to remember how to work with the pan colors.

I've had this little travel watercolor set for ages, and I'd forgotten that it has a sort of secret picture of Van Gogh that's only visible at the right angle or in the right light (like this!).

The next view I sketched was this one.

I like how it turned out. The reflective surface of the hotel was quite striking at some times of day, capturing the blue of the sky vs. the blue of the water. 

Here it is, trying to approximate the viewing angle from where I was sitting.

I wish I'd felt up to sketching out in public this trip, maybe next time I will, but at least I had this nice view to work with from the comfort of the hotel room.