Sketchbook Cover - May

My standard sketchbooks are bound in grey carton that is great for working on. This is the A5 portrait format I use when going out.

I digitally mock up the head-with-hands, and sketch it in charcoal on architect's vellum  - you can see the sketch at the top. After priming the sketchbook's cover with white acrylic paint I use a brown watercolour pencil for sketching, and then dab in first strokes of the colours I want. I have cheap acrylics left I use instead of my artist's grade paints, so I won't be sorry when it eventually gets beaten up from travelling. I work on the glass pane of an old picture frame, which is easy to clean, and I can put my sketches under it, like here:

I'm going for garish colours, so I use the paints straight from the tube, expertly titled "brown" or "orange". Wonder why I want to get rid of them? I cover the entire thing in a thin wash of orange and apply reds and yellows with palette knives. Every now and then I strengthen the contours with the watercolour pencil. To paint properly, I have to prop the sketchbook up on books, with the pages between the two stacks.

I use a discarded plastic inlay to cut out a mask, and attach it with masking frisket. This gives a very uneven line, but that's okay. Then I use golden paint with palette knifes to cover the outside, and make sure some of the uneven underpaint is visible. After scrubbing my nails down to their beds by rubbing off the frisket, I add a thick outline with Indian ink, and use a drinking straw to blow it around. I also use a thin ink pen to draw outlines around the fingers, which in hindsight was no improvement at all, but that's water down the river (I suppose I could've scraped it off with a knife and overpainted, but, *heavy sigh*). Finally, I spray it with fixative, which reduces the stickiness of the paint and evens out the different shines of the browns and yellows.