Creative compost and joining the dots…

Music credit: Stepping Stones, Laura Platt

Creative compost

Sometimes people ask me how I copy my sketchbook pages into paintings. The answer is I don’t…

I don’t think of my sketchbook as a precursor, a rough draft, or a plan to follow.

It’s more like creative compost.

Slow growing sparks

Sketchbooks are the place where ideas are scattered, layered, scribbled, left to percolate.

Some grow slowly. Some never go anywhere. Some spark something else entirely.

I come back to pages from years ago that have been quietly waiting for me, I spot something and and think “yes, this”…

And sometimes things just appear in my paintings because of artistic muscle memory, things get lodged in the artistic psyche, embedded into the visual venacular because they were once explored and unpacked in a sketchbook.

A sketchbook can be the compost and soil where ideas take root, the archive where ideas rest or the workbench where they’re shaped.

Trust the dots will connect

Nothing is wasted, everything feeds everything…

I like this idea from Apple’s founder Steve Jobs, he’s talking about life, it also applies perfectly to sketchbooks and art:

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something, your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

~ Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement Speech 2005

‘Trust that things will somehow connect in the future’ seems like a great philosophy for art making.

My sketchbook isn’t where I plan a painting, it is more like the soil, the compost, the place from which everything grows, the place from which all the dots eventually connect…maybe.

Art supplies

• The sketchbooks I am using in this video is the Venezia Book from Fabriano.

• The heavy body paint is called Sennelier Abstract Innovative Acrylic Paint

• The High Flow Acrylic paint is from Golden

• The Mixed Media paper is from Fabriano

(Some of these links are affiliate links, if you buy something through them, I might earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. I only ever share the products that I use. )

One page sketchbooks

In this video I show you how to make a simple sketchbook from one piece of paper and a way to tidy them up by gluing and cutting.

I make these simple one page sketchbooks very frequently and have for many years. There is something extremely tactile and pleasing about their intimate scale. I like the fact that it’s just one piece of paper, no pressure, no expectations, it feels expansive and freeing.

The great thing is that you can make them from any paper you have, I happen to have a lot of heavy watercolour paper (350gsm) and I use that but you can use what you have to hand, you could even use cheap computer paper. These sketchbooks end up with 8 sides, so the end result will always be an eighth of the size of the paper you started with…

I sometimes begin the art work before the page is folded into a sketchbook, there is something about the surprising and unexpected compositions that come with the folding which I enjoy.

I’ve made them from abandoned drawings or from scrap pieces of paper, reusing and recycling and making something from not very much. I might take a painting that hasn’t quite worked and use it for the start of one of these art books, adding collage, painting over sections, turning the unloved into the loved.

Thank you to artist Sue Brown for the idea of gluing these sketchbooks. you can of course just make them by folding and one cut if you want to keep them super simple (the gluing helps if you are using thicker paper and want to neaten them up, because thick paper doesn’t fold as well and so the end result can get a little wonky.)

Inside the art journal of Frida Kahlo

THE DIARY OF FRIDA KAHLO: AN INTIMATE SELF PORTRAIT

In this video I take you inside the art journal or visual diary of the artist Frida Kahlo. I share the book: The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self Portrait published in 1995 by Abradale Press an in-print of Abrams Books, with subsequent reprints in later years. You can read more about this book on the publisher’s website, it is still in print today…

It’s a book which I come back to time and again.

Frida Kahlo, one of the most iconic artists of the 20th century, was born in Mexico in 1907 and is famous for her self-portraits, characterised by vibrant colours and powerful symbolic imagery,

This book fully replicates 170 pages of her visual journal or sketchbook. She worked in the book for the last ten years of her life between circa 1945 and 1955 and it gives a intimate insight into the woman and the artist.

INTROSPECTION AND EXPRESSION

Her diary or sketchbook, I think, reflects both a deep introspection and bold self-expression. She has clearly used this book as a means of exploring her inner thoughts, emotions, and personal experiences, her identity and her place in the world.

IMAGERY AND SYMBOLISM

It’s packed with symbolic imagery, metaphors, personal, political, religious and cultural iconography all patch-worked together.

Pages from Frida Kahlo’s visual diary

EXPLORATION AND EXPERIMENTATION

It also shows all sorts of artistic exploration and experimentation, she mixes up various techniques, styles, and art materials. She combines elements of realism, surrealism with symbols and motifs to create a visually rich, and at times bewildering and beguiling whole.

I think she is exploring her personal pain and suffering and yet it also clearly demonstrates her magnificent wit, playful spirit and vibrancy…

Her journal feels like a significant work of self-expression, resilience and creativity…and I think it’s just fascinating.

Making collages to inspire paintings

In this video I share a process I use to help me find new ideas and compositions…

CREATING COLLAGES

I make photocopies of things I’ve created, such as pages in my sketchbook, I collect together abandoned drawings, and offcuts and oddments from my art practice and I use all these pieces and fragments to create temporary collages which I then photograph.

The photographs are then used to inspire further drawings and paintings and then those drawings and paintings might be used to inspire something else…its a creative stepping stone.

A temporary collage made from old drawings, and photocopies of things I’ve created

FOLLOWING A BREADCRUMB TRAIL

Art making is often like following a breadcrumb trail through the forest to an unknown destination… I never quite know which path will lead to something magical and which will lead to a dead-end. I like the fact that making art can feel like a journey into the unknown...

A painting in my sketchbook (left) inspired by a collage made from pieces of an old magazine (right).

COLLAGES MADE FROM MAGAZINES

If you don’t have offcuts of your own art to use to create a collage, you could try with pieces cut from a magazine.

Above is a small collage I’ve created by cutting interesting bits and bobs out of a magazine.

Creating a composition from random found shapes and pieces is like constructing a puzzle… it involves lots of questioning and thought and is not always as easy as it may appear. ‘Does this look balanced? Is this interesting? Is it too busy? Is it too boring? Does it work as a unified whole? The sort of questions you need to ask when creating any art work are tested by this type of excercise. In all these experiments, I’m seeking discoveries, learnings, revelations…flexing my creative muscles.

I believe most artist’s have a seeker’s soul. Looking for fragments of ideas, trying to figure things out, attempting to join the dots, make connections, piecing things together to better understand themselves and the world around them. Trying to find out who they are as artists and how they want their art to look, feel and be in that moment…

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This mindset shift which has helped the most…

Music credit: Ludlow, Masterpiece of Mess

In this video I talk about how my art making changed dramatically when I stopped concentrating on the flaws in everything I created and started appreciating and seeking the things I loved about my own art. This change allowed me to appreciate my personal sensibilities, tune into what made my art feel like mine and improve my skills.

I love this quote from Ira Glass, the American writer and broadcaster. It is about writing but is true and applicable to all forms of creativity…

“All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple of years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer.

And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have.

We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work.

Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

IRA GLASS QUOTED IN 2009 WHEN TALKING ABOUT THE THE ART OF STORYTELLING ON CURRENT TV

This idea is true not just for beginners but for everyone who is at a point of transition, or trying something new or integrating a new process into their existing approach.

Our ambitions can be greater than our abilities and that is just part of the creative process…my advice is to keep going and keep paying close attention to what you like, enjoy and care about in your own work…

Mixing art supplies

Today I’m chatting about mixing media and combining art supplies…

CONNECTION WITH THE MATERIALS

There is something about the physicality of creating art which I love, the connection to the art materials is part of the joy. I try and choose my art materials with intention, they influence and inform what I make. I relish the sensory and tactile nature of mixing the paint, touching the materials, how the paper feels, the physical connection to what is on the page. I enjoy leaving my mark on the page, the evidence of the physical act of art making is an integral part of my art…

UNEXPECTED DELIGHTS

There is real delight to be found in mixing different types of media and art supplies on one page, the visual variety, the different sensibilities of different art materials combing to create something surprising, interesting or unexpected.

INSPIRED BY THE PROCESS

When making art in a sketchbook, the outcome is not so important, this allows a certain amount of freedom to explore different processes, materials and combinations of materials. The magical element is often what is discovered about the way materials can be manipulated, how they play together...