Sketchbooks or Sketches and Books
So on this course, I can go through sketchbooks so so quickly. I went through a fifty page sketchbook in just under a week. But the next one took me the rest of term. I think there are different ways to treat a sketchbook.
That first one, that took me a week? It was small, it was only A5, stretched out to an A4. It’s quicker to fill an A4 page than it is to fill an A3 page. It feels more secret, and then that quickens up your pace, because you have no inhibitions and then you turn the page while your still on the same thought and then you’ve got a commentary and then you’ve got a sequence and then you’ve got a narrative. All the drawings are given the same attention, they’re looked at just as hard as each other. It’s because they’re all equal that they become a narrative. Yeah, parts of the story might have less action but all parts of a story are equally important. This is a sketchbook.
Then there was the other sketchbook, that took me ages to fill. I think it took me nine weeks, and the last bit was a push. The sketchbook was bigger, it was A4, so stretched out to A3, which is pretty big really. Each page would take me an hour or so of messing to get out right. But I treated it differently, I was trying things out in the sketchbook, making notes for bigger drawings, or playing with media, or messin’ with looking at the world a little bit differently. Unlike the last sketchbook, not every drawing was treated with the same attention or respect. It was more ‘all drawings are equal but some are more equal than others’. This is a book of sketches.
Then there’s this, which is probably part of the reason why filling that sketchbook took so long. I HAVE ACTUALLY STARTED DRAWING ON LOOSE PAPER. A friend once described her practice of drawing on loose paper and lack of sketchbooks as ‘giving every drawing the same chance’. I think this was referring to the fact that drawings in sketchbooks become redundant once you’ve finished the drawing, they can’t be displayed easily or sold individually, the drawings life is contained in that book.
I’ve had my friends advice floating around my head since we talked about it - I can’t say I agree, the drawings in my books are just as important as the loose ones and seeing as there are things like the Rabley Sketch Prize and the Harold Riley Sketchbook Prize etc, things are on the up. But I do understand that drawing on loose paper is different.
Firstly; things are bigger! I tend to start A2 on a board, just ‘cause it’s easy and I’m lazy. People tend to accept these bigger drawings as more finished. There’s no difference for me, small or big. There’s also the option of adding bits of paper on to get bigger. Or tearing bits off to get smaller.
Secondly, you can play with colour etc a bit more. A sketchbook can be appreciated as a whole thing, a narrative. On loose paper you’ve got nothing to live up to, nothing stuck in your thoughts and you can’t leak ink onto a drawing you’re already happy with. Things can progress quicker maybe, it’s easier to move on.
After a few weeks of drawing on big, loose bits of paper, I was a lot more comfortable with loose paper altogether. I even tried lots of small, loose bits to try out the sequential thing again. Weirdly, the bit of binding keeps my head in narrative mode a lot more; the loose ones just became a kind of unrelated series.
I think I just need to keep a balance of them all. Big, little sketchbooks. Big, little loose papers. Although loose paper will be easier to frame for the show though.
Train Book of the month; “LANDSCAPE AS A CABINET OF CURIOSITIES” Gunther Vogt (Edited by Rebecca Bornhauser, Thomas Kissling).
I felt really cool reading this pretty-ass cloth-covered, embossed hardback on the train, like, ‘look how intelligent I am, reading architecture books on my way to drawing class’ but actually I didn’t get much out of it. I powered through it, it took me two weeks to finish. I thought the conversational format would be good for me, it would make it easier for me to understand. Actually it made it harder. The questions were long and the answers were longer, spanning from childhood to the present day, making it quite a rambling journey to find something new. The general idea was great; I totally agree with a lot of the ideas put forward; that we’re just a part of it all, parks aren’t really nature, that we need to think about our environment and make collections of our thoughts.
