​Mr. Darcy has been enjoying country visits lately (and definitely deserves some treats these days), and I’ve been enjoying sketching on the family farm. So with the sunshine yesterday, we took off after lunch and had a lovely walking, sketching (me), frolicking in the lake (him) outing. It feels good to mix up the slow printmaking with some immediate gratification sketching, and it felt extra good to sit by a lake and drink in a little sunshine before the next blast of winter.

I’m still really enjoying the Inktense pencils and having fun with the layers of texture they get. I’ve added a couple of greens to my set, but I’m still using half watercolor and half pencil for bigger sketches like the landscape. The muse sketch was more pencil, but I did add some yellow ochre and burnt sienna to the body, along with a bit of green at the base. You can see from the photo that Mr. Darcy didn’t stay sitting up for long, but I managed to catch the basic outline (had to wing it on the light). I loved him sitting alert and listening to the spring frogs (who are going to have a shock today with snow showers forecast for one day after a 60 degree high) and his ears moving in all directions.