All the Time In the World for a Good Book

Vacations are great. It is such a treat to have an abundance of time for reading and sketching. This morning my brother-in-law was at that point in his book where he could not put it down and so was a perfect model for me. He sat in a large comfortable chair and the combination of his relaxed posture with the way he stared at the book caught my eye.

I used gouache and pastels, as I have for the past few weeks, but this time on a much larger sheet of white watercolor paper rather than on a small black sketchbook page. At some point I began to treat the gouache more like transparent watercolor and the white of the page shows through the paint. Additionally, because the sheet of paper was large, I drew more detail and got quite a different look from my recent gouache sketches on black paper. It is interesting how much of a difference the color and size of paper makes. I like both looks but plan to work in the small black sketchbook for the time being.