The importance of process

Musings on the creative process with a ‘green pencils and markers’ cameo

Dear creatives,

I was planning on writing something light and fun for this edition, where I show you all my favourite and much used green pencils and markers. But then I started writing about how and why I came to use them and ended up writing a whole lot about ‘process’. So here you have it. Something a little less light, but still fun, about an artist’s process and my favourite green pencils and markers.

On location drawing is part of my process, as is using my bag as a table it seems.

But first, something else,

I discovered Koosje Koene’s ‘Draw tip Tuesday’ videos over six years ago. Me and my daughter, who was two at the time, would have our weekly, Tuesday, ritual where we would watch the video with our art supplies ready and then afterwards we would try out everything Koosje taught. Sometimes, we wouldn’t even wait until the end of the video before starting to try out her tips and tricks. (Sorry Koosje.) This week I had the honour of being mentioned in her video in connection with a workshop of mine that she followed a while back. And I so happen to have another run through of that workshop in two weeks’ time. So if you find yourself in the Netherlands on the morning of 2 September 2023, there are still a few spots available for the Explore: COLOUR! workshop. After that the weather is usually too bad for outdoor workshops, so chances are very slim that I will do another run through before the end of the year. So if you haven’t booked your spot yet, do it now.

Process vs final artwork

The question of process vs final artwork can be almost as divisive as the question of form vs function. Just throw out the question at your next group dinner. Ask everyone what they find more important, the form and beauty of something (like a building or a shoe) or the functionality of it, and hear all the different opinions that your will get. The same goes for the process of an artwork vs the final product.

An artist’s process has always been important, albeit more to the artist than the viewer. However, my prediction is that in the current AI age, process will become more important than ever. Maybe even more important than the final outcome; or rather that the worth of the final outcome will be deeply influenced by the process used. The two can no longer stand separately.

Every artist has a unique thinking and working process, it is something that plays a fundamental role in their style. One of my favourite things to learn about an artist is their process. I think that is part of the reason why I like the Van Gogh museum so much. A big part of the museum is devoted to the sketches that Van Gogh made and the letters that he wrote to his brother Theo. In those letters you get a peek into what Van Gogh was thinking about his art and the world he lived in. David Hockney also gives us a peek into his process in the documentary A Bigger Picture. Later in his life Hockney went back to Yorkshire, the area where he grew up. He wanted to capture the landscape there, but not only that, he also wanted to be filmed while doing it.

A line and wash sketch from back in February 2019.

When I started with urban sketching I used mainly the line and wash technique. A fountain pen with waterproof ink for the lines and watercolours for the washes. These materials and this technique is probably the most commonly used technique for urban sketching. As time went on I started to feel stuck in my progress and I started to explore other mediums. One of these mediums was coloured pencils that I would use in combination with the watercolour, either to do the line work instead of the pen and ink, or as extra colour to put on top of the watercolour. However, there are two things that I find very frustrating when using watercolour in an urban sketching setting - the time that you have to wait for the paint to dry before you could add other materials on top, and mixing your colours. I felt that both of these things slowed down my process. By the time the watercolours have dried, I was already bored with the sketch and wanted to do something else.

I started to keep an eye out for how other artists solved this problem, while in the meantime I started to use Inktense watersoluble pencils as a workaround. This mostly solved the problem as you don’t have to mix colours, you “mix” them on the paper, and it was possible to leave the ‘adding water’ step to right at the end. This is still one of my fastest sketching techniques that I love to use when traveling with my family, because I know I will have a maximum of 15 minutes to make a quick sketch.

A 15 minute Inktense water-soluble pencil sketch while on holiday with my family.

Meanwhile it turns out that I wasn’t the only artist that was experimenting with ways to work around using paint on location. Liz Steel started to experiment with watercolour markers, and Sandi Hester with using paint markers. My kids gave me a small set of Faber-Castell Pitt Artist brush pens, so I decided to experiment with using them in combination with coloured pencils on location. It was a match made in heaven. There’s so many things to love about this combination of materials:

• I no longer had to break my flow to either wait for paint to dry or mix the perfect colours.

• I was forced to use a limited palette, something that helps me with simplifying the scene.

• I could sit with a hand full of markers and pencils and easily switch between them.

A recent quick landscape sketch. The thing that attracted me to this scene was the light in the middle ground in contrast to the dark foreground.

On location landscape sketching

I have a specific pencil case that I use when I go landscape sketching on location which helps me to limit the amount of materials that I can take along. As time went on I have figured out which colours I like to use most for dutch landscapes. I am also aware that these colour choices will change if I go landscape sketching in another county, because the colours differ so much from one place to another.

There are basically three green markers that I use: a bright green, a dark green and a grayish green.

My collection of green coloured pencils are slightly bigger. I have bright, a medium and a dark green. This dark green (Caran D’Ache Luminance Dark Phtalocyanine Green 719) is my absolute favourite and I use it so much. I also have two dirty greens, one light and one dark, both from the Derwent Drawing range. And then lastly I have a green turquoise (Caran D’Ache Luminance Cobalt Green 182) that I don’t use that often, but when you need it, you need it. When I went out sketching earlier this week, I noticed that the landscape colours have shifted and are going towards a much grayer, late summer, green, so I will be adding the Derwent Procolour Distant Green 43 coloured pencil to my kit to see if it suits the scenes.

The main thing that I learnt about myself and my art process is that I prefer to stay in the flow when I am drawing or painting. I used to find painting with acrylics very frustrating because my flow would be broken each time I had to mix a new colour. But now that I know that that was my main problem I could find a way to fix it. So I bought a box of small jam jars and mixed the paint colours I would need a day in advance. Then on the next day I can paint without interrupting my flow. I can hardly believe how much of a difference it makes to the quality of my paintings and my level of enjoyment while making them.

A selection of my jam jars with premixed paint. I like to paint the lid so that I know which colour is inside the pot.

Figuring out your ideal art making process takes a lot of time and experimentation. You can’t just take someone else’s process and assume that it would work for you. Sometimes it is needed to try out someone else’s process, however, chances are good that you will start to figure out yours when you least expected it. It might take using an art material that you thought you would never use (that is coloured pencils for me), or it might take joining an online life drawing class. The trick is to experiment and reflect. If you find something that you feel brings you joy or peace you are probably on the right track.

In the meantime, may you enjoy the process of finding out what your process looks like.

Until next time,

Nino