Sketchy

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I'm trying to fill my sketchbooks over the next couple of weeks because I will be applying to a drawing course. I fell a little rusty, so I will be doing a really intense drawing session every day for a while, to get going.

I’ve got two sketchbooks at the moment. One of them is a large Moleskine. It’s a great brand: nicely shaped, a pocket in the back for storing loose drawings and a rubber band to keep the book shut. And the paper is incredible: thick and smooth with a creamy ivory hue. Most sketchbooks have very white paper, which looks cold and abrasive. Someday, hopefully, I will find Moleskine-type paper in big loose sheets, too. The right kind of paper is very important. Fineliners and brush pens work especially well in a Moleskine, so that’s what I normally use. I do a lot of imaginative drawing in here, as opposed to observational drawing.

The second sketchbook is something I made myself, out of different kinds of paper: sugar paper, coloured paper, graph paper and tracing paper. This one is just for observational drawing. Because of the different papers (some are translucent) and because the pages vary a lot in shape and size (resulting in flaps and overlaps), it presents quite a challenge. I need to give extra thought to where I draw and how it all looks together. Here are a few sketches I made in the natural history museum in Oxford and in the Horniman Museum in London last spring (as always, you can click on the images to see them up close) :

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I’m making an effort to loosen up my drawing: to draw more, to take more risks and use a variety of materials. In the past I’ve usually strived to make finished pictures, an attitude that easily freezes you up and results in boring, flat images. But now I’m trying to let myself make mistakes in my sketchbooks. After all, they are for sketches, not finished drawings. If you see the sketchbook as a tool for investigation and exercises, then you can learn from both the good stuff and the bad.
I’ve also started to revisit old drawings and to change or add to them. With some distance to old work, it’s easier to see what works and what can be improved on. Sometimes, with stuff that’s completely rubbish, I’ll even paste a piece of paper on top and start again. Another thing I do, for some reason, is that I turn failed portraits into monsters. I’ll add snouts and fur onto faces I’m unhappy with. Like so: