An essential part of sketching, especially if you — like to/have to/ want to — draw fast, is to know your tools well. You have to experiment to find out how the different kinds of pens, pencils and watercolor equipment in your kit works, what kind of line quality different pens will give you, color intensity, and more generally what you can use different tools for.

Lately I have been making some of my sketches on toned paper (Strathmore 400 Series Toned Sketch), the color of ones paper obviously play an essential part, but the interesting thing is that it is not necessarily easy to predict how different pens & pencils react to tone.

So this morning I set out to do some tests:

My work on toned paper is heavily (heavenly?!) influenced by the wonderful work of Pat Southern-Pearce, and at the moment I try to limit my palette to the trio black/white/blue – with a hint of yellow (not to get totally overwhelmed by my possibilities & meager skills in handling them). 

Luckily I am in it for the long run (–she suddenly decided–) and I intend to get a lot better at this! (Just give me a couple of years …)