Steph
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Cosmo’s cosmos
A pet portrait painted in jelly gouache on a drink board for a friend’s wedding.
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Solo performer
Walked into town and enjoyed a solo performance while sketching. Musicians are nice subjects because they stay sort of in place for a while 🙂 It feels a little silly to carry such a large array of materials with me when I only use a couple after all. But you never know which materials the…
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Free coloring pages
Please enjoy these free printable coloring pages 🙂 If you’re willing, please share your finished colorings with me at mail.steph.inks@gmail.com; I’d love to see what you come up with!
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Race weekend sketching
I took a sketchbook (of course!) to an amateur race this past weekend, and happened to snag a seat in the pit with a near-perfect angle on a beautiful custom-built hillclimb car! Media: Noodler’s “Bulletproof” black ink in TWSBI Eco pen with F nib; Leuchtturm sketchbook paper. My view was slightly obstructed by tanks of…
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Outdoor musicians
I was inspired by a friend’s musician-filled sketchbook, and I wanted to practice with this neat mini-palette I picked up recently. Luckily, this very groovy five-piece band was playing right by the square downtown. 🙂 While I was painting, a little girl sitting nearby was fascinated by my portable paints. I gave her mom an…
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Street corner from the coffee shop
It’s amazing how time flies when sketching. This ink-and-watercolor sketch took up the full two hours that I spent with the city’s urban sketching group. Much of the time was spent color-mixing, a skill I’m practicing more thoughtfully lately. Mixing a full array of colors in advance allowed me to avoid color gradients, keeping the…
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View from the watch tower
We spent a night in a nearby city and I found a few opportunities to sketch outside. First, a beautiful vista from the top of a fire watch tower. It was very windy up there, so I rushed to scribble out a memory before I lost my sketchbook or my hat. And later, sitting in…
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What to know before trying jelly gouache
One of the most frequent questions I hear from passersby as I’m painting is “What’s that stuff you’re using?” It’s jelly gouache (pronounced “gwash”)! As far as I can tell, this is a newly-developed medium. I saw illustrators using it on Instagram and simply had to try it. Since then it’s become my go-to medium…
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Signs for the street fair
I helped a local business prepare for an upcoming street fair by drawing up some new signs using chalk markers. Designing these boards put me in a lettering-focused mindset, and I’ve been staring at fonts ever since. It’s a neat side of drawing that I’d never delved into much before. I never thought of myself…
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Chickadee in a cherry tree
For my future mother-in-law’s birthday this year, I wanted to give her a memento that would suit the colors of her newly decorated home office. For a pink-and-white theme, of course I’ll choose cherry blossoms! There were many, many iterations of composition before I landed on one that felt right. My fiancé helped break me…
