I finished my training as an artist at A Level and I feel I have skipped some of the valuable lessons that further education in Art would bring - using sketchbooks is one of them.
Seeing how some artists use a sketchbook is a revelation and they are works of art in their own right - a mixture of practice, playing with ideas, a reference point of colours, textures, fabrics and fonts, preparation for finished work, colour exercises and more. The wonderful Grayson Perry released a greatest hits from his sketchbooks and rightly so. They are moodboards, very personal notes, some quite finished pieces of art - at the same time serious and very funny. In his case it is almost an overflow of his creative mind - I'd highly recommend seeing a copy. I would love to think like he does and marvel at people who are just so full of creative thought and ideas. I would love to cut things out and glue them into a book but I don't understand what that would give me - I can see it may help to explain my ideas to others but that doesn't happen very often.
As a birdwatcher I know that there are many very talented artists who apply this when they are out in the field. Many rare birds have their identity confirmed by the contemporaneous notes made alongside beautiful sketches. I am sure that this will become less prevalent with the growth in digital photography but I do like the presentation of an image with beautiful notes alongside. I used to think the market traders price tags all used the same font and that somehow they had been trained. I think the same is true of sketchbook users - they all have great handwriting which creates its own pattern on the page.
As well as untrained I am also a lazy sketchbook user - preferring to dive in and work things out on the page. I found myself doing far too much as finished work and wanted to give myself an outlet for work that was just for me and so last year I bought a proper sketchbook - a beautiful Khadi Papers cotton rag 210 gsm 20 x 24cm book and I love it. My first entry was this ink drawing of Kenilworth Castle. The paper is beautiful and soft so the nib of the pen occasionally caught in the flock of the paper.
The idea for me is to use the sketchbook as a journal more than a practice piece. I value each inch of paper so much that I want to do something worthwhile on every page. I use both sides of the paper and so these will not make any since but for being part of the sketchbook and I quite like that commitment - they will only ever be for me.
This helped me in my Abstract January exercise where I didn't have the confidence to do finished paintings but I could 'doodle' in the sketchbook without fear of failure. The paper can take a lot of water without buckling and so I really enjoyed using washes without it once leeching through to the reverse
Some entries are never going to be 'worth' developing into a finished paintings - many of my bird paintings are remembered moments from birding trips and I am probably a harsher critic on these than most - I know whether the bird sits in a balanced way and whether the plumage is right or not.
The surprising number of Great White Egrets at Rutland Water is a moment for me and not for everyone but it is nice to be able to look back over the months and remember the day I sat looking at this bird and then more than 20 others
The sketchbook is also great for taking on holiday - small enough for the hold suitcase. I get bored easily and so rotating between music, books, podcasts and painting is great for filling time on a quiet afternoon and just occasionally it will throw up an idea - like this one - which may work well as a larger painting.
So far I am averaging three sketchbook paintings and one finished work per month and so the sketchbook is starting to fill up - I have my next one ready for when the last page is complete. Already it is starting to tell the story of happy holidays and moments from the last seven months.
I do envy and admire the artists who know what they are doing with a sketchbook - who have better ideas and better control of the finished works as a result; who discard ideas because they never work on a smaller scale. I hope they treasure them like Grayson Perry for the jewels they are in their own right - both artistically but also as an insight into the way they think. I know I am a lazy painter in many ways and so I've found a method that works for me.
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