One of the good things that happened last wet season was sketching regularly at the beach... For years and years I've said I want to paint the wet season clouds, skies can be so dramatic at that time of year. About 10 years ago I bought myself a beautiful moleskine A4 sketchbook for this exact purpose. Needless to say it was too beautiful to use, and is still on my shelf it's plastic wrapper unopened!!
So what made it happen this year? One thing was the terrible weather - it was relentlessly hot and humid with little rain to cool things down. Usually I go to the beach to walk, but I realised I was getting home so drained I was worn out for the rest of the day. I thought I don't have to punish myself like this! But I still wanted to go to the beach so I took my sketchbook and a chair instead!
The other thing that helped was sorting out a small sketching kit that worked for me - an aquabrush (no need for a waterpot and extra brushes) a couple of watercolour pencils and a dried up watercolour palette - I squeezed out tube watercolours onto a small palette rather than taking a big watercolour set.
I went sketching a couple of times a week from Xmas to the end of March, and made around 30 sketches. They are tiny 10x15cm in a little cheap sketchbook. Some are good and some are not so good, and that's ok because it was really about the process; about spending time looking, about playing with watercolours a medium I rarely use, about going back again and again for another try, and in the end achieving something I'd wanted to do for a long time.
