A really simple sketching challenge – ink and watercolour motivation

Today is a really simple sketching challenge. Something which can get you picking up your ink, your watercolours, and just diving in with no pressure whatsoever. This blog post serves as a step-by-step guide for this simple sketching challenge, but you can also watch a video run-through just here as well.

Getting started.

Grab whatever pen is sitting nearest to you, even an ordinary biro, and pull out your watercolour palette. Today, we aren’t painting with it. We are going to draw the palette itself.

Set a timer for exactly two minutes. Sketch the rectangular tin, the little square plastic pans, and those stained, messy mixing wells. Don’t worry about straight lines, nailing the perspective, or making it “good.” Let the grid be wonky. Let the shapes overlap. Make it quick, loose, and messy.

The key here is to see in shapes. You can see my sketch above is nice and simplified, and below I’ve annotated my reference, my palette, showing you approximately how I’ve divided the shapes up exactly as I’ve done in the video.

Bold ink.

As you may know, especially if you’ve taken part in my free mini sketching course or my beginner’s course, I have a clear process to how I love to sketch. After those first light lines comes some bold ink. Now, the bold ink doesn’t just go anywhere, it goes where we see shadow or where we want emphasis in our scene. This takes a bit of practice, but you only get that practice if you put pen to paper and give it a go. Below, you can see where I chose to put my bold ink.

Still feeling good? Splash on some colour.

And if you’re feeling good once the timer goes off? Pop on some colour. The best part is the palette is already open and the mixes are literally pre-made for you. Just wet your brush, pick up whatever dried puddle of paint is already sitting in the lid, and splash it straight onto the sketch. No color theory, no overthinking

For the messy palette wells, I chose to pre-wet the page and just apply my colours wet on wet for some Extra watercolour effects and movement. And you can see here on the page what happens is rather fun as a direct result.

My finished version.

Nothing is finished until we sign it, but when we apply our signature, it’s giving us that sense of closure and a little bit of a sense of pride as well. This is a simple Sketch, but one which is super exciting, quick to do, and looks great on the page.