The Leftovers Sketch

Jan 5, 20242 min read

Making this sketch prompted me to think about the place that 'leftovers' have in my art - and not the Christmas kind!

What to do with all those snippings of paper and that excess paint on the palette when I come to the end of a project?

The answer is to use them up of course! It creates a whole new set of limitations to work with, which can be a challenge but one I'm always up for!

So these are the colours I had left when I started this sketch - quite a colourful selection which I new straight away I'd have to edit down as limited palettes are more my thing! I included two different browns - Burnt Umber and Transparent Umber which I either used on their won or added to the other colours to de-saturate them a bit.

Paint that's been sitting in a wet palette box for a while becomes a bit more runny which is no good if I'm want thick opaque paint, but for these sketches it introduces a range of almost glaze-like options, which are at bit unstable but add to the overall aesthetic of the finished piece. I always use glazing medium or liquefying medium if I want to dilute paint for my bigger paintings, but these thinned paint options are just fine for sketching on paper.