Working at a large scale is enormous fun and almost always challenging, it pushes me creatively and the element of risk feels high with the effort and time that goes into these pieces, let alone the logistics of working outside in all conditions. But it’s my sketchbooks where much of the real graft happens… the exploratory mark making, hours of keen observation getting to know a subject, quick notes to put down an impression of something that is fleetingly here and then gone.
Muckle Flugga from Hermaness at the most northerly tip of Shetland
My sketchbooks are most definitely not a neatly curated selection of finished sketches and paintings but more likely a motley gathering of thoughts, ideas, observations and obsessions on paper. Corners are often dog-eared, pages wrinkled from being out in the rain and scribbled shopping lists generally populate the final few pages. Quite often by the time they are full they’re virtually falling apart from hard use.
pocket size sketchbook with thin watercolour paper for speedy colour notes
There is the sense of self-imposed pressure to make something “good” and the sight of a clean new sketchbook or sheet of paper seems to strike anxiety into so many of us for fear of messing it up! But they can be places to just have fun, to try new things, experiment and learn, some pages might be disasters - I certainly end up with ones that are a complete mess - but I learn so much through the process and working with enthusiasm and gleeful abandon. (Sometimes this means that a drawing on a previous page that I’m pleased with gets spoiled when a later work floods the spine of the sketchbook, pastel gets smudged or myriad other accidents - a little frustrating but by then I’ve learned whatever the lesson was from making the sketch so it doesn’t matter).
Tysties (black guillemots), a slightly grubby rough sketch getting the shapes down quickly.
I often like to take a few books out with me at once so that I can work at different scales and on different paper, maybe some are thin drawing paper, another with something a little heavier that will take watercolour. And having a few means that I can work on them simultaneously while paint is drying or if I want to look at one drawing while developing an idea in another book. (Loose sheets are good for this too).
My three mixed media sketchbooks from Shetland, I also had some cheap, thin softback books for pencil drawings and very quick notes
They are my treasured possessions, full of memories and full of small challenges, ideas tested, lessons learned, like a good friend who is always there to bounce ideas off.
So, here are a few pages from my travels around Shetland during May and June, I hope you enjoy them…
