My new helper - Carl Gouge Hole Punch

I have tried a few new things since this US road trip started. First, I started using chalk pastels with watercolour. I found the pastels work especially well when I couldn’t get the lightest value with watercolour.

Then I tried sketching on toned pastel paper. I always admire Tina and Sue’s work on toned paper but wasn’t sure how to approach it. As James brought a pad of toned pastel paper with him, I finally decided ot give it a go. I quite like how my sketches turned out on these papers! To me the papers work the best when the lighting is bad and watercolour wouldn’t have the best effect.

So I started to think how I could have both watercolour paper and toned paper in my sketch kit. At the beginning of the trip, I was using a B5-sized folder to hold my paper and finished sketches. It was convenient enough as I could put assorted sheets of paper in each plastic sleeve, which means I did have watercolour paper and toned paper at the same time. The folder, however, was not so practical for sketching on location. Therefore I started looking into binding my own sketchbook again.

I have tried stitching my sketchbooks in the past. The books worked fine but it was time-consuming. To stitich up a sketchbook that opens flat would take me a couple of hours at least and requires some tools to hold the paper and the strings. Not ideal when I’m on the road. Just then I read Shar Blaukopt’s article, which mentioned Brenda Swenson’s method. That got me started digging around the internet, and there I found Carl Gouge Hole Punch!

Instead of explaining how the punch works, here is the link to a video about the punch. https://youtu.be/lyh_2z3Z-Tw

As you can see, now I can make spiral-bound sketchbooks in less than an hour and have any kind of paper i like. I just completed filling in my first DIY sketchbook made with Carl Punch and made a second one last night. I can’t wait to make more sketchbooks in different sizes soon!