I love drawing cats - mainly because I have a cat, I love her and I want to draw her. I found it really hard in the beginning…. but over time it started feeling a lot easier. Maybe it’s just how much you do it? But a cat hasn’t very long legs, has it?

I’d like to share some cute animals from my sketchbook today! Some that I enjoy drawing - some with short legs!

Let’s start with squirrels! I enjoy their shape so much, especially with the big tail and the lovely way of holding food in their hands.

They’ve also become almost as important as birds to me. Something I can come back to without fear.

Here are some more cuties I made over the past months.

Finally I also wanted to share a few of my cat images. I find them still not easy to capture - but it’s getting better. I really feel that junky - not so detailed - drawing tools work better. I really like to use the Liquitex acrylic markers for my line work or a un-sharpened colored pencil. Once I’ve drawn the outline, I go in with all kinds of different mediums. Sometimes I start by making a colorful background and then block out the shape with an opaque medium, such as an acrylic marker or a Neocolor crayon.

I hope you enjoyed my pictures this time!

Here are some affiliate links to support me. That doesn’t cost you more, it just gives me a small amount of money back. Thank you so much!

Here is my Amazon Storefront sharing my favourite Sketchbook and Mixed Media supplies.

You will find a lot of supplies at a good price point at Craftelier:
Craftelier Germany
Craftelier UK

If you are into inks you might want to check out Ferris Wheel Press (a canadian stationery company - producing in the UK). Use “JA-SUSANNE” to get a discount!

Thanks for stopping by today! xx Susanne

So here we are. He is a maker. We now have a small pottery studio in our basement and a brand new kiln in the garage… the last months have been amazing, full of creativity and hand craft. That doesn’t mean that I haven’t drawn! I still draw everyday - mainly in the evenings on the couch - with quite a big setup of materials next to me. Beyond a lot of animal drawings I also started making some imaginary still lifes. This all started because I wanted to sketch out some vases that I’d like to make in the pottery studio. I then coloured it in and was super happy with the result and I enjoyed the process so much. So I kept up with it and here are some of the spreads I made during the past weeks.

These were the first simple drawings I did, to plan out the shape of the vases and then I added colour to imagine how they could look like, once glazed…

Because of the fun I had making them, this grew into a lot more spreads…

This one with the cat is one of my favourites

I mainly played with Derwent Inktense and Drawing pencils, acrylic markers and some watercolour markers. By the way - my new favourite pencil for outlines it the Midnight blue from the Derwent Drawings and I still love using the chunky Liquitex markers in dark blue or brown for my outlines.

Here are some affiliate links to support me. That doesn’t cost you more, it just gives me a small amount of money back. Thank you so much!

Here is my Amazon Storefront sharing my favourite Sketchbook and Mixed Media supplies.

You will find a lot of supplies at a good price point at Craftelier:
Craftelier Germany
Craftelier UK

If you are into inks you might want to check out Ferris Wheel Press (a canadian stationery company - producing in the UK). Use “JA-SUSANNE” to get a discount!

Thanks for stopping by today! xx Susanne

Until the last days I didn’t want to change that way of working but I then I started a new sketchbook (I filled all books I used during summer) and I started working on some mixed media birds…

… I was so happy with these drawings that I truly thought about keeping this Sketchbook (which is by the way one from Royal Talens) only for birds. I did these over a soft pastel background. I used mainly Sennelier and Schmincke pastels together with Ultra Mat Medium. I then worked over the top with coloured pencils ), acrylic paint pens (Posca & Shuttle Art) and Sennelier Brush Pens.

You might think it’s not worth the time thinking about it. But I really am not sure how to handle this? Do you keep sketchbooks for themes or do you only use one for all? As I also really like to work bigger sometimes - there will be bird drawings in my A4 sketchbook (which is a Canson Graduate Drawing), too - so they never will all be in one place anyways…

Here are some affiliate links to support me. That doesn’t cost you more, it just gives me a small amount of money back. Thank you so much!

Here is my Amazon Storefront sharing my favourite Sketchbook and Mixed Media supplies.

You will find a lot of supplies at a good price point at Craftelier:
Craftelier Germany
Craftelier UK

If you are into inks you might want to check out Ferris Wheel Press (a canadian stationery company - producing in the UK). Use “JA-SUSANNE” to get a discount!

Thanks for stopping by today! xx Susanne

Let’s start with the Croatia paintings! I love drawing and painting from old sketches, because it feels not so overwhelming compared to drawing from photos or from live. I have to say that even drawing from live is much easier and more expressive than drawing from photos. You just don’t get so strickt and everything becomes more loose.

I did the next from the sketches I made during our June holidays. I sometimes even forgot taking photos when I was drawing on location. In the end that doesn’t matter if you have your sketch, does it?

If you are wondering which materials I prefer using, I have them listed in my Amazon storefront. For alle these landscapes I often played with watercolors but also watercolor markers and acrylic markers. I then work on top with colored pencils and crayons. My favourite is to mix my own markers (Montana acrylics, Ecoline & Pebeo Colorex or Sennelier Brush pens). I just buy the refill inks and create new colors. It’s easy with the watercolor inks as you can mix those beyond each other. For the Montana markers I have use the original refills and also the Daler-Rowney FW ink (just the antilope brown).

Here are the paintings I did from Google Street View:

The last three here are already inspired by some scenes in Slovenia! That’s where we are going for our summer holidays this year. I can’t wait to do as much location drawing and painting as possible when we are there.

What do you prefer, drawing from photos, live or from previous sketches?

Thanks for stopping by!

xx Susanne

I mainly worked with Daniel Smith watercolor sticks, normal watercolors, coloured pencils, Neocolor II Crayons and different kinds of markers. For some textures I used the Art Chunks from Cretacolor and the Derwent XL Blocks.

I hope you like the images! If so feel free to follow me on my Instagram Sketchbook Journey.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

The paper is very similar to the Talens book, but not 100% the same. I used markers, coloured pencils, brush pens, gouache sticks and Neocolors. I am very much inspired for these drawings by a fun class I took from Lewis Rossignol - “Draw like a Child”.

I started with some quick ones as kind of a warm up…

next I tried some more “right” frogs - but recognized, that it was not a lot of fun.

So I decided to become more playful and don’t worry too much about any proportions…

I was so happy with these two, that I made another drawing afterwards…

I put together a little reference pdf on Canva - I have a paid subscription and there are loads of frog images available. I did this already with a bunch of subjects in the past. I made a pdf in Canva and then download that to my tablet, so I can flip through it. Even if you don’t have a paid Canva subscription, you can find reference images that are completely for free. So give it a go!

I hope you like the frogs!

xx Susanne

For today I’d like to catch up with some of my holiday drawings from last August in Croatia.

I mainly worked in my favourite sketchbook, from Royal Talens – but I discovered also a new series of jounals I really love. The graduate sketchbooks from Canson! As always I worked with a lot of different materials! My favourites were watercolors, Daniel Smith watercolor sticks, Neocolors, colored pencils, markers (acrylic and watercolor) but I also enjoyed the different kind of XL Blocks from Derwent.

Thanks for stopping by today.

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