Experimenting with Inks & Acrylics | Prague Rooftop Sketch

There are only a few blank pages left in my sketchbook, and I decided that my next sketch will be in color. I also decided to take out my long-unused inks and experiment with them. Since the sketchbook I’m using doesn’t handle ink very well, I primed the pages with acrylic paint. Then, using black ink (Lefranc & Bourgeois Nan-King Intense Indian Ink), I sketched out the Prague rooftops and the weather vane (copper rooster). The ink has quite a thick applicator, which helped prevent me from being too precise. In the end, this turned into an extreme mess. Then I kept layering until I finally told myself: now this actually looks good.

For the houses in the background, I only used Derwent Pastel. I love this color (Indigo) because it goes well with the pink that shows through from under the Parchment-colored acrylic paint. No matter how I tried to film it so the video would capture the colors the way I see them here in front of me, it just isn’t the same—something gets distorted, and that mysterious atmosphere the painting gives off in person is lost. Still, I hope you enjoyed watching how the painting came together. You can see what impossible combinations I try out. None of this was planned in advance. I improvised, and it could have turned out in countless other ways.

That’s what I recommend to you as well: experiment, and dare to mix things. Don’t cling to lifelike representation, but try to convey the mood. Make lots of different versions. I was just talking with my friend, and she said she definitely wouldn’t have left out the river from the painting. But I really cut away the “unnecessary” things—if you compare it with all the details in the video that inspired the painting, you’ll see the difference. That’s why it’s so good to make several versions, either the same or with different techniques.

But experiment—you never know what will come out in the end.
Happy creating!

#mixedmediaart #InkAndAcrylic #pastelart #sketchbookart #artexperiment #acrylicpainting #inkdrawing #layeredart #arttechniques #creativeprocess