Last week, I had a long-overdue video catchup with my great friend Esther Semmens, who lives in Edinburgh. We continued our tradition of sketching a Scottish castle while we chatted. I’ve just created a dedicated tag for this Scottish Castle Project so you can see other castles we’ve sketched over the years.

This time, I suggested Claypotts Castle, a one-of-a-kind tower house. I did two sketches while we chatted (below), and then after the call, I looked up a little more about the building, did a third version (above), and drew the plan.

There is a lot of mixing of media in these three sketches!

The two examples below are good examples of reflex sketching, meaning that I concentrated more on our conversation than my pages.

In all three sketches I used the monthly theme from my Sketching Adventure Community on Patreon – Going to the Edge. I’m finding this theme a bit harder than I expected as it goes against the natural way I work (as described in Foundations Lesson 11: Working from a focus). But I’m absolutely loving this challenge and seeing how others in the community are using our theme this month.

As a result of this monthly theme, I’ve just changed my sketchbook (thanks to the community’s suggestions for helping me decide which one to choose ) and will share some highlights with you in a future blog post. So stay tuned for that!