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Kate Hadfield Designs

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More Sketchbook Explorations

25 May 2018 by Kate

If you’ve been following my blog for a while you might remember my post about the sketchbook projects my daughter and I were doing together inspired by Lisa Congdon’s Sketchbook Explorations classes. Today I’m sharing some more sketchbook doodles and patterns inspired by some of the classes and our family holidays to beautiful Cornwall! I took my little watercolour sketchbook with me and grabbed ten minutes here and there throughout the holiday to add some watercolour washes or to doodle with a pen. I also carried on working on some more sketchbook pages when I got home, developing some of the ideas and using different sketchbooks and materials.

Taking inspiration from the beautiful Cornish coastline, I started by playing around with a series of rock-pool inspired patterns, adding layers of watercolour and inky doodles:

Sakura Koi watercolours and Artline fineliners in a watercolour Moleskine sketchbook.
Watercolour, Koi brush pens, Uni-ball Signo white gel pens and black fineliners in a Moleskine watercolour sketchbook.
Tombow Fudenosuke pens, watercolour and Posca paint pens, Moleskine watercolour sketchbook.
Aquamarkers, Gelly Roll Glaze and Muji gel pens in a watercolour Moleskine sketchbook. 

There were some gorgeous hydrangeas near our holiday cottage, so I made a few floral inspired patterns next inspired by the beautiful flowers. Some ended up more abstract than others!

Watercolour, Koi brush pens, MUJI gel pens and Uni-ball Signo white gel pen in a Moleskine sketchbook. 
Watercolour, Koi brush pens and MUJI gel pens in a Moleskine watercolour sketchbook.
 
Posca paint pens in a Moleskine sketchbook.

Our favourite beach near the cottage we were staying in has the most amazing rock-pools at low tide covered with all sorts of different varieties of seaweed. I used one of the techniques in the Sketchbook Explorations course to create these colourful seaweedy patterns:

Koi brush pens in a Moleskine watercolour sketchbook.
Koi brush pens and Sakura Gelly Roll gel pens in a Jackon’s Art Lay Flat sketchbook.

If you’re interested in playing around with colour, shape and art materials in your sketchbook you might like to check out both of the Sketchbook Explorations courses, I really enjoyed them and often dip back into them for a little creativity boost! They include lots of great techniques for you to do with your kids and would make a perfect summer art project.

Materials Used

I took a little kit of my favourite drawing essentials away with me to Cornwall including:

  • Moleskine watercolour notebook
  • Sakura Koi Watercolour set (mini travel set of 12 colours) and Pentel Aquabrush
  • Sakura Koi colouring brush pens (about 15 of my favourite colours!)
  • Black fineliners in various sizes (my favourites are the uniball Uni-Pin pens)
  • Uni-ball Signo white gel pen
  • A few coloured gel pens (MUJI)

If you do start a sketchbook this summer I could would LOVE to see what you come up so please feel free to get in touch to share your sketchbook with me!

You might also like:

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About Kate

Hello, I’m Kate, nice to meet you! I create fun and funky hand-drawn graphics to help you make beautifully illustrated scrapbook pages, craft projects and teaching resources – and have fun while you do it!

Previous Post:Scotland the Brave (and a little Scottish freebie)
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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Lisa D.

    31 July 2022 at 9:11 pm

    Gorgeous inspiration Kate.

    Reply
    • Kate

      1 August 2022 at 3:06 pm

      Thanks so much! They were a lot of fun to make.

      Reply
  2. Julie

    6 September 2018 at 1:01 pm

    What beautiful sketchbooks, thank you for sharing!

    Reply
    • Kate

      6 September 2018 at 1:19 pm

      Thanks so much for your kind words!

      Reply
  3. Michelle Goggins

    26 May 2018 at 9:10 pm

    Hi Kate, I’m so glad you wrote this post so I could learn about this Creative Bug class! I just signed up for it. It sounds like so much fun! I really enjoyed looking at your beautiful sketchbook.

    Reply
    • Kate

      29 May 2018 at 11:02 am

      Ooh, let me know what you think of the class! I really enjoyed it, I hope you do too!

      Reply

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High resolution, hand-drawn products for digital scrapbookers, hybrid crafters & teachers. Add a touch of hand-drawn whimsy to your scrapbook pages, craft projects and teaching resources with these fun illustrations!

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