Hi all, I'm pretty new here, but looking forward to digging in and learning as much as I can, as time allows. 
I thought I would start up a "sketchbook" thread here, where I can post pieces of work - hopefully motivate me to keep practicing! I haven't had a chance to enter any 3rd Thursday contests in over a year, as life is very busy with a new baby, but I watch the videos and try to take on board as much as possible.
Just lately I have picked up my watercolour paints again, in an effort to create something. My digital style tends to be quite highly rendered, which takes a long time, and at least with watercolours I can get a piece finished in a day or two.
I've always struggled with drawing, and felt like my lack of drawing skill stopped me from doing any painting or art - cos it all has to start with a sketch! But I've been trying to push through that and....just do it. Drawing what I see, slowly and carefully, trying to observe shapes and negative space etc. The other thing that I always have trouble with is background / environment / scenery. I like painting the main focus character or item, but have trouble with backgrounds. In my latest painting I forced myself to paint all the background and leaves first, and only work on the main flowers when everything else was pretty much finally rendered. I watched Will's "10 steps to digital painting" course, and he mentioned that - working background to foreground so as not to mess up. It really helped, and I'm happy with how this turned out, though I can see a LOT of areas of improvement - in watercolour it's hard to go back and fix though, and I tend to get caught in a cycle of overworking the paint, until the paper pills, so I have called this "good" and will apply what I've learned to my next piece.
Hopefully I can share more digital stuff and WIP as I go along. Thanks for stopping by!
