A couple of days ago I decided to go though the saved photos on my Instagram account to refresh my memory on whose work I’ve been loving lately. I stumbled upon Heather Day’s mini sketchbook of abstract work again and suddenly felt really inspired. I had a tiny (barely filled) moleskine sketchbook hovering about and thought that would be perfect to do my own abstract experiments!
I started experimenting with the Faber Castell watercolour pencils I got for Christmas, which are actually amazing and I love them, and then did some mark making with my Palomino Blackwing graphite pencil. Since I had been doing mostly digital work this year I hadn’t had a chance to use these materials yet, I really fell in love with all of them, they feel like great quality! I finally added the collage butterfly wings and loved the movement it added as well as the juxtaposition against the watercolour.
I wanted to play around more with the watercolour pencils so did some pebble inspired blocks of colour, then went in with graphite and collage again. I really loved the collage aspects of the last two spreads so decided I wanted to do just a collage spread for the next one.
This one was all collage from magazine cutouts! I really liked the combination of the colours and textures, and playing around with the composition and negative space. I’m super happy with how this experiment came out and I’m excited to play around more with this medium.