Welcome to the first post of 2013, a new year hopefully full of promise, creativity and unbounded potential for us all. Whilst trying my upmost to remain in a creative mindset over the holiday period, I have to confess I found it monumentally difficult to maintain any momentum. Still, there are some things to show today so the time wasn’t wasted completely.

The small doodles from the previous post have received a goodly amount of attention in their transfer from the sketchbook into the A3 Newsprint pad. Taking them up in scale quickly helps greatly in the process of nailing the views one is after and is a great way of giving the old freehand skills a good work out. The newsprint paper is possessed of a beautiful kind of softness which takes Biro pen really well, and so drawing is both fast and furious, though it has a strange resistance to certain media like chalky pastels. That said, it can withstand a healthy level of abuse for such thin paper. This stage of the process also provides a great opportunity to throw some colour about, just to see how things might work if that’s the chosen way forward. For this I’ve used some very old Caran D’Ache Neocolor pastels that have been with me for years. They don’t crumble like normal oil pastels, so less mess, but they still maintain a fair degree of smudge-ability, so you can blend and overlay the colour. Sat here writing this I’m of a mind to perhaps try them out on a much larger format sometime, once I’ve visited the art shop to get a few more colours that is, currently the small tin holds the remnants of perhaps half a dozen or so. There are quite a few of these little sketches to work up, so more coming in the next post.