I think that keeping a sketchbook is essential to my artistic life, without one I lose my way or dry up. It’s a place to store ideas, and a map of uncertain terrain I must write myself and then follow; its crucial. It’s the core of everything, a sacred practice, so I often fail to bother with it.
There are always things to do that seem more important; after all, no one pays me to keep a sketchbook, and I’m not very good at it. My indoor books, which I make neatly in the safety and comfort of my room are mostly alright but, the outdoor ones, en plien air, are a continual source of disappointment.
Periodically I decide to be a ‘proper’ artist, and go out into the countryside to draw and paint. This usually occurs around October, when I visit Cornwall, when the world and its palette is particularly beautiful. It’s also convenient, because I can blame my failure to keep up the practice on increasingly terrible weather and not my horror at what I produce.
It’s hard painting outside. The light keeps changing. Dogs try and eat my pencils. People try and make conversation, or worse, try and see the terrible thing I have created. I invariably haven’t packed the one thing I am sure will transform the horrible mess on my page into a masterpiece.
A bad workman blames his tools, but the watercolours in my travel pack are not the ones I use at home. At home I can use gansai tambi, vibrant Japanese watercolours which handle very differently to the western watercolours I struggle with. I bought my gansai tambi at the car boot sale practically new. A friend later sent me a set for no reason whatsoever, so these paints were full of joy even before I used them and I love them, but they are big and unwieldy, designed for big, unwieldy brushes which I also love.
Drawing is different from a photograph though; it’s worth the struggle. You can hone in on something, or draw the way it moves instead of a static capture the camera takes, or draw your response, your feelings, rather than an accurate representation. It’s worth practising.
This is a sketch of the reflections of masts and rigging of sailboats in Plymouth harbour. I took a photograph too. The photo is nice, the lines wriggle along, but it wasn’t how I remember it. I remember the motion of the water making the lines of rigging connect and then breaking apart, making rectangles, circles, a dance. You can’t see the rectangles on a photograph. A photograph is only one moment in time, so they are not there.
Often I see a wonderful thing and I take a photo and the wonderful thing is not wonderful anymore. It is drowned out in the background noise. A camera records everything. Sometimes I get home and there’s just a picture of unremarkable landscape and I can’t even remember why I took the picture. It’s not how it looks in my brain, which focuses in on that one good thing and blurs out the background noise.
Sometimes it is not obvious to me how to focus in on a thing. I try and put in too much detail, too much background, too many colours. I burn through pages trying to find the right balance.
It’s tempting to put the whole thing aside again this year, but instead I hold on through the anxiety and bad feelings, hold steady against strong winds and keep from rocky shorelines. Every terrible sketch is not a waste of a page but a lesson learnt and re-learnt. I buy cheap sketch books and I tie myself to the mast and head into the storm.
Relatable. I’m one of those people who has a stack of empty sketchbooks that are too nice to spoil with bad drawings.