moleskine sketchbook

Hi everyone I've been horribly busy

I recently bought a moleskine sketchbook - I'd never even heard of them until recenly but then several people said they liked them and a friend showed me some great sketches she'd done in hers in coloured pencil when she toured in the US.

So I treated myself to one.

Then at college they'd bought in these sets of Lyra coloured pencils called Skin Tones - 12 different earth colours - honey, sienna, cool browns, caput mortem, deep dark browns and I thought mmmmm .... like these... so I've got a set on loan so I can show the students what is possible with them

So this is what I did

First sketch when I visited the Renoir landscapes exhibition a week ago - it was just done in biro while I sat listening to the headphones and wondering how I was going to find the energy to move on again ....


I added the colour at home




it was a really interesting exhibition in chronological order - it was lovely to see how bad the early landscapes were! then the strong influences of Monet and Cezanne as he painted with them.

They had hung a painting of each of them from the same viewpoint at La Grenouillerie ... Grenoullere? and Monet's was far better.

then I did this of her ladyship as a tiny kitten, attacking himself's hand - she liked to play rough




I really like these pencils in their limited colour range for sketching - for madame they are the right colours anyway but for the crowd at the exhibition I like working in that limited range, it was fun,

Anyway, I like the moleskine and the Lyra and plan to sketch loads more with them

moleskine: brand name - no moles involved!