I’m a little behind with the 30 Days of Sketchbook Joy. Yesterday was to use a material you don’t reach for. I chose Neocolors II. I buy a couple individuals whenever I go to the art store. I rarely reach for them and would like to try using them more.
Today was an observational drawing. I was pressed for time so I did a cute little drawing of my mug in Neocolor II and colored pencils. I bought this mug from an artist when we lived up north. It is one of my cutest and most expensive mugs I own.
I am quite enjoying Katie Moody’s 30 Days of Sketchbook Joy. I love looking at the prompt in the morning and then having the day to think about what I’m gonna do.
Today was olive green and pastel pink. I immediately thought of my brothers wedding in 2026 cause those are their colors so I did a mini spread of things that I know about the wedding. You can see in the first image I was brainstorming in crayon.
I was short on time today so I used colored pencil and Neocolor II.
Day 3 of 30 Days of Sketchbook Joy was houseplants. I don’t have any plants cause I do not have a green thumb but I did think about my grandmas old house on the orchard. It sat at the top and it had these big beautiful bay windows that overlooked the orchard and it was lined with plants.
We had a lot of wonderful family dinners in that kitchen and it’s always been a dream of mine to have something similar.
Day 2 of Katie Moody 30 Days of Sketchbook Joy was a pop of orange so I did a combination of random journaling with some gouache illustrations on top.
I journaled about anything from my life attached to the color orange and I came up with my grandmothers popsicles, Fanta that I drank a lot when we travelled to Greece, mandarin oranges that my son is obsessed with eating right now and orange essential oil from our time up north when we would get massages from a spa that I’ll never be able to replace.
Prompt is from Katie and the art inspiration is from Ammie Y’all on YouTube.
This is my first art challenge I’m participating in! Katie Moody on YouTube was one of the first people I started watching when I began practicing art last year. Her book Sketchbook Joy is coming out soon and I hope my local bookstore gets a few copies in.
Her first prompt was to draw your art supplies so I did two experiments. One was for my daily pages and I painted the art supplies I had brought out to do some plein air earlier today. The other was my most used art supplies lately.
Tomorrow’s prompt is a pop of orange. I’m gonna try my best to follow along on all her prompts! I’ll share here and on my Substack.
I started on a new painting tonight! In January my daughter started doing something really cute where she surrounds herself with her stuffed animals and pretends to go to sleep. When she did that I immediately knew that I was going to redo her Sleep Tight painting (which I was planning on doing anyways). I got the sketch and background done tonight 👍🏻
I also haven’t shared much about a painting I did for a friend’s daughter as a gift. I talked a bit about it on my January in Print on Substack. This month I’ll flesh more out about it and share it on the blog!
I was having an off morning. Definitely feeling the winter blues. I mustered up some energy and packed the kids into the car and toted our butts to the local art gallery not far from our house. It’s small compared to the downtown location and we were only there for 20 minutes but I felt so much better when we left.
The current exhibition is called Closer to Fine and it’s a members exhibition.
I was particularly drawn to an abstract piece called Crossroads by Paula Charter and some abstract florals (I mistakenly took a picture of the wrong descriptions so I’m not sure who the artist was).
There was also a little art library that smelt of old books that I probably could have perused for hours.
The whole experience made me walk away feeling better ❤️
I’m changing up my February visual journaling. I decided to have one key illustration on the left with any smaller sketches about my day on the right. I’m three days in but I am loving the new way!
Tonight’s After Eight! Started working on Parker’s painting for his room. I made a similar one for Victoria and I wanted them to have this matching set. So far I am loving his! I picked up some more Gouache from Opus Art Supplies and the Ash Blue is stunning. Likely tomorrow or maybe the next day I’ll have this one finished.
Finished the night off with a little 30-minute visual journal session of our day.
I really liked today’s balance of painting and sketching/visual journaling.
I took a little break in November from daily visual journaling to explore some other stuff but for December I’m back at it. I love, love, love how today’s turned out. My favorite is probably the little reindeer sketch in the middle.
I wanted to try a different kind of visual journal this month! I was inspired by some accordion type sketchbooks I’ve been seeing so I thought I’d create a DIY meets Junk Journal sketchbook spread for this month. So far it’s just plain copy paper taped together.
At the end of the month I want to create a big, busy, messy, illustration encapsulating our whole month. Similar to my Victoria and Parker Celebrate Autumn but more journal like.
Today we visited my auntie and cousins that are in town and at one point two of my cousins and my kids were on the floor coloring. I snapped a few photos but on my way home I thought I needed to sketch them.
The photo below is a quick sketch I made in the afternoon just to get the idea out in the sketchbook.
This is the final sketch I did after the kids went to bed.
Neither of my children have much “stuff” on their walls so I wanted to paint something for both of them. I finished this one tonight and I want to make my son a matching one. I love the Neocolor II for the writing and all the texture from the Gouache. I may repaint this one later when I’m better but tonight I’m quite happy with the final result.
Normally I would sketch out my ideas and then do a study on the right before moving into a bigger piece but I felt like skipping it this time. A study is helpful because I can see what I would do differently for the final like color choices and lining.
I love all the different layouts and mediums I’m exploring in Novembers visual journal. October I was pretty much following the same format and using the same tools but November I gave myself full permission to try anything and everything. This is November 14th to the 18th’s spread using a Hocoro Sailor Dip Pen with a Fine Nib and Liquitex Carbon Black Acrylic Ink.
Tonight’s After Eight 💕 This afternoon we kicked around a ball and when we got back my daughter pulled her toque over her eyes and reminded me of those Christmas gnomes which inspired tonight’s little painting. I also saw some vintage inspired illustrations on Pinterest and wanted to try out a different kind of framing. Lately I’ve been doing sketching and paint swatches on the left side with the full spread on the right. Freaking love this little practice I’ve been doing in the evenings after the kids go to bed!
Today we were at the park and I saw an oak leaf on the ground and thought oak leaves are my favorite which inspired tonight’s painting which is fitting cause it also snowed this afternoon so autumn inspired paintings will soon turn into winter 🧡
The kids are in bed and it’s my time to create!
SO EXCITED! My personal phonebook from my last trip came in early! I made an 8x10 trade book from Blurb.
Reading Women in Sunlight by Frances Mayes (found the recommendations here) and it makes me want to move to Italy! We’re planning a trip in 2026 and I could not be more excited! Italy has always been an absolute dream for me to visit.
I might of stumbled onto a new photography series this morning. I’m calling it Patches of Sunlight. We don’t get a lot of natural light in our home. But in the morning the sun hits the living room and always creates these beautiful shadows.
