I’ve been continuing to use the Colour4Life selection of Albrecht Durer pencils sent to me by Faber Castell Australia (as part of their annual competition – see more here) and I’ve been really enjoying the challenge of using colours that I wouldn’t normally choose.

As I mentioned last week, this set doesn’t have any browns or greys or dark colours so I’ve been exploring other hues… and I’ve ended up using a lot of purple and orange!

I’m also using the two purplish-greys from the GoldFaber Aqua Dual Marker set.

So here are some orange and purple sketches that I’ve done in the past two weeks…

It’s been really fun to use a limited palette and the result is that my everyday day is much lighter than normal! The following photo shows all the art supplies I’m carrying around with me. You might notice a few graphite pencils – more about that next week!

As for the pen-holder, this was made by my friend Cecilia Simonyi – the creator of the Walkit Bags. This was part of a prototype I tested years ago and it works great for me. My article on the Walkits I’ve used is here (I absolutely love using them when I’m teaching face-to-face workshops.

And BTW Cecilia has just announced a sketching tour for October 2023 sketching in Hungary which looks beautiful – find out more here.

And finally… for those of you who just have to know exactly what I’ve been using…

Albrecht Durer Watercolour Pencils going from right to left (I’m lefthanded so I normally do colour charts this way!)

• 103 Ivory
• 102 Cream
• 109 Dark Chrome Yellow
• 113 Orange Glaze
• 118 Scarlet Red
• 128 Light Purple Pink
• 225 Dark Red
• 133 Magenta
• 138 Purple Violet
• 137 Blue Violet
• 143 Cobalt Blue
• 145 Light Phthalo Blue
• 152 Middle Phthalo Blue
• 144 Cobalt Blue Greenish
• 149 Bluish Turquoise
• 153 Cobalt Turquoise
• 154 Light Cobalt Turquoise
• 162 Light Phthalo Green
• 171 Light Green
• 264 Dark Phthalo Green
• 172 Earth Green

GoldFaber Aqua Dual Markers (Shades of Grey set) going from right to left (once again sorry for my lefthanded way of working)

• 277 Titanium Violet Light
• 230 Cold Grey I
• 282 Hyacinth
• 279 Purple Grey
• 233 Cold Grey IV
• 199 Black

It’s been so much fun to use these colours and it was a little hard to transition to graphite sketching… but more about that next week! Stay tuned.