Sketchbook Play- by Kate Yetter

Hi Everyone, it's Kate here with you today.

Lately, I have been inspired by sketchbook tours to make my sketchbook more of a practice place. If you are like me, you want every page in your sketchbook to be as pretty as the flip-throughs on Youtube, but in order to make the pretty stuff, you need to practice and experiment. Gouache is one of those mediums I haven't yet tried and I thought this would be the perfect place to give it a go.

Garden Botanical Mask

I started off by stenciling my image onto a page of my sketchbook.

Not knowing what I was doing, I started with gouache on the leaves in several different colors.

I chose a palette that I thought would go together and started painting.

At this point, I wanted to fill in all the white space, so I added some foliage and a background.

And I added some more. At this point, I was unhappy with the flowers. I worked them and re-worked them. Even though this is my first time working with gouache, I love that it allows you to paint layer upon layer until you are happy.

I love the look of ink so I added black outlines but not to everything.

I finally got the flowers the way I like them.

I love the way it turned out. I would have used more stencils but my page wouldn't allow due to size. Now I am thinking about all the possibilities with my other flower stencils.

Imaginary Botanical Mask

Eucalyptus Stems Mask Small

Chinese Garden Plum Blossoms

If you haven't used stencils and Gouache, give it a try. You can cover up all your tracing lines with paint and work it until you are happy. So pull put those stencils and your sketchbook and have fun!

Until Next Time,

Kate