 Hello there, it's Sandy Alnok and today I am going to be watercoloring in my Page a Day sketchbook from Lake Michigan Book Press. This being the final day of World Watercolor Month, I thought I'd share a new sketchbook from Lake Michigan Press and do a little painting in it. This is a custom made sketchbook and custom made just know that that means to ching to ching. They're not for the faint of heart, but if you've always wanted a sketchbook that has the cover you want and it's in the color you want and the threads you want and the paper you want and the size you want, she will make you whatever you want and you can get whatever kind of thing you want. This one is the page a day and it has a page for every day of course for a year and she writes you a little letter inside. She's super awesome. If you would like, she would actually show you step-by-step pictures in her Instagram stories of your book being made. So if you want to watch that happen, she would be happy to show that to you. But this book with Arch's cold press in it is almost four inches thick, which is big. I'm not going to be carrying this around with me to go sketching anywhere because it's huge. The cover I got in a dark color so that it would not get fingerprints all over it because it's going to take me a long time to use it up and I don't want to spend time making it all dirty and icky. And the pages in here are gorgeous as always Arch's cold press. Some of the pages are deckled edge because that's what she cuts them from the sheets and other pages have straight cut edges. I also ordered a small sketchbook because I wanted to see what that was like. These are much more reasonable and this you can get again in whatever kind of paper you want. You can get this in Arch's and of course she'll charge you more for more expensive paper, less for less expensive paper and each one has signatures in it. The signatures are basically groupings that have a divider in between them and then she sews them all together. And she has pictures and stuff on her social media that you can see lots of how things are made and all of her beautiful book presses and things. This is the side view of the page a day. You can see kind of how big and honky it is, but it has the signatures as well. I store it face down when the paintings are all dry because I figure that's going to press them down and make the paper flat. Which I don't really have a whole lot of problem with in general that pages are not as warpy as I expected it was going to be when I first ordered this. I didn't know if I was making a mistake in purchasing this or not, but sometimes I put tape around them and kind of make some framed type of pictures. Sometimes I go all the way to the edges. The church picture is actually glued on top of an ugly painting because I made a whole mess of something and I just felt bad at the beginning of the book making a messy painting. So I decided to glue something over it. I don't normally do that in sketchbooks, but this one cost enough that I just didn't feel like I could stomach that having a bad painting in my first couple pages. So this mountain scene in the lake is the one that I'm going to be painting here for you today in real time. So you can watch the real-time painting happen except for I'm just going to show you parts of it. I'm not going to show you every brush stroke on it. But I thought I would talk a little bit about a few things about sketchbooks and paints and stuff while I'm sitting here painting. One is that the sketchbook that you choose is going to inform how well you grow as a painter. And I have used every different kind of sketchbook. I've got a whole stack of sketchbooks. Some are finished, some are not. But what I find with watercolor sketchbooks is that if I get the off-the-shelf ones that are really inexpensive, I can certainly do painting on them. That's not a problem. But if I'm trying to translate a technique that I want to use and want to test out and try and experiment with and practice and get better at, if I try that on some cheaper paper that doesn't have full cotton content or has a different texture, that sort of thing, then I'm not going to get the same results when I move to my arches or my Saunders Waterford when I go to the big paper. And those papers have particular things that they do with the paint. And I want to practice those in a small setting so that I am ready to do those techniques. I want to practice things like what I'll be doing in this painting, dropping one color into another and seeing how they merge. The colors are going to blend into each other and charge into each other in different ways on different papers. And it's not like completely night and day different ways. I'm not saying that you can't use other sketchbooks by any means. But what I do find is that the techniques that I can practice on this paper, my arches is going to be more relatable to what I do when I create a large painting. And that helps me to get better in a small setting so that when I'm ready to translate it to a quarter sheet or half sheet painting, I'm a little more ready. One of the other things that I'm trying in here is to create some paintings that I really want to paint large and practicing them small. Because when I practice them small with my big brushes, I do X number of brush strokes or whatever it takes to get the painting done. When I go to a big painting, I tend to multiply the number of brush strokes times 100. It just gets crazy. And what I want to learn is to be looser in my large paintings and make bolder, stronger strokes, matching more of what I'm achieving small and just translating that big. And it's going to be a long journey to get there, but the one area of my large paintings that I want to do is less of the noodling around and more of the overall confident brush strokes. And as an artist, that's just something I'm always struggling with. Another thing that is helping in a lot of these smaller paintings that I'm doing, and all month long I've been practicing on doing my World Watercolor Month daily videos, is things like this where I'm charging one wet color into another wet color. This is yellow ochre going into moon glow. The two of them make a delightful brown. And they make all different kinds of delightful browns based on how much of the moon glow you use and how much of the yellow ochre. And you can get all different shades of browns from these two colors. As I'm growing as an artist, I'm learning to limit my palette so I don't have to have a gajillion colors in it. One of the reasons is because I have a custom palette on order. And it's been on order for quite some time now. I think it's supposed to deliver later in 2020. I hope. I have to go check in with them and find out. It's a House of Popman palette. And you get on this giant waiting list because everybody wants them and they take them forever to make. They make all different kinds of custom things for you out of it. And yes, I've made payments on it. I am working my way toward getting this thing. But it has fewer wells in it because they're bigger wells. I want bigger wells so I can dip these big brushes in it. And that's one reason why I wanted to get a palette that's going to last me my lifetime. And that one is going to be it. Instead of always going through a million of these small palettes and busting them eventually because I just carried them around and dropped them and all sorts of things. And always have to keep replacing them. But there's my sketch for you for today. And I hope that you enjoyed that and maybe would consider getting one of these lovely sketchbooks for yourself. Over on Ellen Hudson's channel is this little video. It's in colored pencil and it's making a zoom card using some rubber stamps and some colored pencils and blending stumps and things to make a card with a whole bunch of friends chatting on zoom together. So I will put a link to that in the doobly-doo and in the description and all that stuff. And maybe on the end of the screen as well if I get that link up here right away. And that's about it for today. I hope you had a great July. August is coming. Time for more painting. More drawing. More art. Just keep making more art. It's still summer. I will see you guys later. Take care. Bye-bye.