Lately I’ve been practising and experimenting with painting landscapes using watercolour, having used them while on holiday and wanting to be a bit more skilled with them. For references I’ve dug out an old tin of holiday snaps and reference photo rejects. So when the September sketchBOX arrived, with its Autumn theme and colourway, I simply flipped through the same tin for something suitable.

The box contained four gouache tubes, an acrylic paint pen, cream toned paper and a brush.

The first photo that used the colours provided was of chillies. Not sure if this is very Autumnal, but from what I recall of growing them, they were ready to pick around that time of year. The paint went on first then I outlined with the pen.

I wanted to see how well the paper held up to being almost completely covered in paint, so the second reference I picked was of Chinese lantern flowers. It only curled a bit – and I did remove the tape holding it to a board when it was just dry rather than waiting a few hours or overnight. This time I drew in the outlines with the pen before painting the gouache on top.

Everything in the box was good quality and great to work with, though the brush was a tad big for painting most subjects that would fit on the size of card. The size of the tubes would be great for a travel kit, but I’d want a bigger range of colours – or at least one blue.