The sketch book! :D

Everyone, look at this, yhlee made me a sketch book! (To fully admire the craft that went into binding the book, look at his journal entry with more pictures and descriptions how it was made.)



The chess position on the cover isn't random - rather, it's the end position of my favorite chess grandmaster game ever, Tal - Hjartason, 1987. I squeaked when I unpacked the mystery package and saw this diagram! (It's the kind of super-weird position that, uh, has a lot of recognition value.)



The back cover is chess-themed, too. :)



And the book holds a selection of different papers in different colors! YAY! I knew some of them, but others were new to me, so I couldn't wait to test them all! The book is suuuuper fun to use, and for dmonstration purposes, I decided to show the first page of each paper section, with the picture I painted on it. Recently, I've mostly sketched with black and white acrylic pens and my watercolors, so that's what I've used here as well.

( Behind a cut, because hey, these are a lot of pictures. )

As you can see, I'm enjoying the book a lot already! :D It's not full yet, but... Only a matter of time. ^^°

North Sea

Another postcard for Postcrossing. This time, I decided to combine watercolor and papercutting. The person this card is for is another North German and loves the North Sea coast in particular. I am, of course, always happy to help out with North German nature... Comfort zone. LOL.



The seagulls and the island with the lighthouse are cut from cheap white note paper and pasted on a watercolor background, Winsor&Newton Payne's Grey on Vaessen Florence Texture White watercolor paper in A6 (postcard size).

I'm actually quite happy with this one - in hindsight, I'd change a few things about the composition, and also, give the birds more detail, so maybe there's going to be a remake of this one in the future. Possibly also with a nicer seascape... And better papercutting paper that doesn't deform... (Initially, that lighthouse was more or less straight!) Yeah, many things went wrong here, because I didn't want to spend hours on this piece, but all that can be fixed in a remake. The overall concept is fine as far as I'm concerned.