This year, I decided to have a go at the annual 30×30 Direct Watercolour challenge hosted by my friends Marc Taro Holmes and Uma Kelkar.

It’s been 4 years since I last participated, and this year I modified the challenge to suit the fact that I’m in serious Trip Prep mode and exploring different dry media options for quick travel sketching.

So my approach to the challenge was more about Watercolour Plus than strict direct watercolour. In the end, approx 50% of my sketches were direct watercolour, in that I started with paint first!

My goals for this month included:

1. complete 30 small sketches with watercolour using photos from previous travels
2. decide on a primary triad using Daniel Smith or Schmincke paints.
3.  try some different flat brushes
4. compare different ways of combining watercolour with other media (the dry media that I plan to take with me on my upcoming trip to France)
5. explore some mixes for a Toulouse-inspired colour palette (think muted pinks and pale terracotta) and revisit a few opaque paints I have in my palette at the moment.

And I’m happy to report that I achieved all my goals and hit 31 by the 16th of June!

As you can see in the combo image above, I used the same three Scottish photos for many of my sketches, but then towards the end I moved into warmer colour schemes. These sketches were all done in under 12 minutes, with the exception of the two big architectural sketches, which were each completed under 20 minutes. The roofscape sketch was done while on a Zoom call with Uma – I was very happy to have a trial run of her Toulouse workshops.

I’ve been filming weekly videos for my Sketching Adventure Community on Patreon explaining my approach with time-lapse videos for many of these sketches (see here, here and here) but here are a few of them…

Can you tell what other media were combined with watercolour in each of these? (I used three colours of ink, coloured pencils, Inktense pencils, Tombow markers, Neocolor II)

Are you taking part in the 30×30 challenge this year? How’s it going?