Petworth House. Another sketching adventure!

Tricia Johnson
Oct 27, 2019
2 min read

I’ve been writing a series of blogs this year about using your sketchbook en plein air.

The first post I talked about fostering a sketching regime – sketching on a regular basis to develop your observational skills.

In the last post I talked about my sketching equipment and ran through some personal choices for good mark making on the go.

Through these blogs I have used the lovely Seawhite concertina sketchbooks. They have been around for a while, but this year was the first time I had used one. I’m converted! They are just great for a holiday or one off event. I’m not sure I would use one a resource gathering sketchbook though.

My latest sketchbook adventure was a few weeks ago, on a trip to Petworth House. As a family we took an afternoon trip to visit the house.

I took a small concertina sketchbook, but didn’t sketch around the house in the end.

A little selection of photos from our visit.

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We then took a walk through the ground and the park; I decided to sketch as we were walking, stopping at one spot or another to sketch the view. I wanted to sketch different views, but join them together to depict our walk in one continuous image.

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I ended up using a lot more watercolour than I have in previous sketchbooks. I was inspired by a previous sketchbook where I just created a view from a hill in Somerset in watercolour. It had turned out so well I wanted to give it a go again! This sketchbook I only used pencil for sketching and watercolour for washes. It is quite different form my previous sketchbooks this year, having less mark making and line then those.