On Sketching..

over 100 sketches recently! snapshot of just a few of them below..

I’m working very hard on giving myself permission to make bad art...

For the last few months, I’ve been working towards making sketching an integral part of my practise. In the last 10 days alone, I’ve done 70 odd pieces outside, on location at the beach, the harbour and the woods.

Not 70 masterpieces I hasten to add.. more than a few are only fit for the bin. (These are the ones I plan to have a lot of fun playing about on top of them in my little kitchen studio.. waste not, want not)

Why? Well, firstly for years I have been wanted to reintroduce and relearn drawing and watercolour. This where I cut my teeth as an artist.. until my mid thirties I’d barely touched a canvas.

At various points in my twenties I made my living selling watercolours, pen and ink in outdoor markets abroad.. New Zealand, France, Australia. Sketching was a big part of my architecture education - back in the 90s being able to communicate confidently with a pencil in 3d was a core skill at the art colleges I attended, before the days of CAD. We would be taken to Berlin, Barcelona, Budapest and let loose in the city for a week with orders to come back with reams of observational drawings and paintings. It gave me a love of what is now called ‘urban sketching’. ( and I'd like to show you examples but I genuinely cnat find them without spending hours!)

But that habit fell beside the wayside when I started painting in acrylics and oils. I would still take my drawing materials on holiday, and for the odd day out, but as the years passed my skills got rustier and rustier. Until drawing, once my superweapon that got me a good few jobs in architecture (not all architects can rustle up a 3d sketch of a design instantly apparently) was now the least used tool in my toolbox.

And even after 100 sketches I am STILL sadly behind what I could once do with a pencil! But, I’ve been trying to relearn watercolour too, and all sorts of mixed media techniques, and it’s going to take a lot longer to just feel confident with a pen or pencil or stick of charcoal in hand. Whenever I’ve take a break from art in my life, I always tell myself it’s going to take three weeks of making nothing very good to begin to pick back up where I left off. This time, three weeks seems optimistic..

I’m very results driven, and I find it very hard just to allow process to happen, and find the necessary looseness I want to achieve - i’m probably slowing myself down massively but wanting to do ‘good’ things all the time. I really hate sinking hours into something that doesn’t give me pleasure to look at when it’s done. (Like this below.. lots of love on social media but I personally do not like it )

But don’t get me wrong, I’m very pleased with the majority of the things I’ve made so far. I just still see a long road ahead in skills development, finding a voice.

Going back to the why.. I’ve felt discontented in my studio this year. It’s felt a bit stale and repetitive. I think a shake up was needed, and I was struggling over the last year or two in finding quite the right path to do that with my oil painting. Switching mediums felt like a good fit. I took a holiday alone on a tiny Scottish island with the intention of totally losing myself in small works on paper, in experimenting and being outdoors.

I had a fabulous week and made a lot of work.. but just didn’t quite get the outside vibe I was going for, the wild weather for the first half of the trip set the tone for outside observation and indoor kitchen table painting. Which kind of meant I mostly did mini versions of my oil paintings on paper..

A month later, after Easter holidays, I still wasn’t feeling it in the studio. So I set off outside. And it’s been nonstop since. Starting the morning tapping up pads and packing my sketching bag then walking, walking walking all day has become my new normal. I haven’t really stopped to look at the work I’m doing.. I post a few pics on Instagram every day and that’s been the extent of my review processs so far. I didn’t even count how many pieces I’d made until today.

I have set myself a mini goal tho.. no mater what the weather - 3 postcard size sketches on my dog walk. it feels unfair to make the dog sit still for more,; although some days she is very chilled and happy about it (others, like today, she is audibly BORED)

It actually makes me feel like I’m on holiday the whole time. Yes, I have two specific shows in mind for the work I produce; but they aren’t until August and October. Do I really have the rest of this summer term before the school holidays just to indulge this particular hyper focus, to lean in and enjoy it without panicking about producing finished results.? That feels like an artistic freedom I haven’t given myself in years.

And it’s been so good for my physical and mental health - I’d got really quite sedentary after my cancer experience in late 2024.. shuffling along the beach, not really looking at anything but my phone. Now I’m striding, doing 15000 steps a day and losing a lot of weight. Painting my way out of stressful situations rather than wallowing in them. Just being outdoors so much feels healthy.

I haven’t stopped a lot more to say about what all these pieces mean, where I want to go. What’s working and what isn’t. But I’ll save that for another blog.. writing more is another little goal right now. And I promise I'll do a deep dive into what's in my sketching bag for the artists out there.. It's probably less things than you would think! ( or maybe more..)