The problem is I’m not learning from my mistakes. I keep doing these horrible mottled, overworked background washes. Thank heavens for the crop feature on the scanner. The sketchbooks I’m using are heavyweight drawing paper “for use with wet or dry media” but it’s only 93 lb and not meant to take the place of 140 lb watercolor paper. I do have some good quality watercolor paper that I just need to cut down to smaller sizes and USE. So that might help. The other thing that would help is if I would learn how to do washes. That’s really the main thing.

In the meantime here is my slightly wobbly rendition of this lovely ceramic ashtray which is for cigars as you can see from the cigar-sized rests. It’s about 7 inches in diameter and says Italy on the bottom. Such a pretty piece. If I’m ever in the mood for a Macanudo, this is what I’ll use.