Movie night

The first ‘good’ art sketch book I owned was a moleskin art notebook. I decided to test it out by simply painting what I could see. This coincided with our movie night, so what better way to test it out than to paint in front of the tv. I started with my husband sitting with my daughter who is in her wheelchair (it’s tilted in space). Then painted the screen and then what I saw in one of the scenes. I finished just before the movie ended.

Can you guess what movie we saw?

Review of the moleskin

I managed to paint quite a number of good paintings with it. I bought the smallest as I heard it’s best to paint small as it’s similar to larger paintings but you take less time and thus get more practise. I bought the 3.5 x 5.5″ pocket moleskin art (200gsm, 60 pages cold pressed) and whilst it was much smaller than I expected I appreciated the small size. It was very portable, you need to use smaller brushes so while a lot of artists recommend starting with a 8 round, for this size you’re better off with a 4 or a 2 round.

The paper is quite thick but still curl when wet. It is suited the wet on dry technique I was using at the time as I was still learning to use the watercolour techniques. I found myself defaulting to how I would paint with acrylic. I found the wet on wet harder to use and the paint would run across the page quite easily. It pales in comparison to my Hanhmeule which if you’ve read my other posts, you would know this is my favourite brand for paper.

Moleskin is quite expensive here in Australia for even the smallest sketchbook costing about $30-40 AUD. This is comparable to the other sketchbooks on the market so considering the price I would choose another book such as the Hanhmeule or even the Stillman and Birn alpha or beta (this feels like it has a similar thickness to the Beta even though this is 300gsm) get better quality paper that suits wet on wet style of painting.

And the movie was… Trolls the scene was when they sing about love. It’s not exactly like the scene but it’s got enough of the essence to make it recognisable to my kids so in my books it passes the test.