A mixed media sketchbook tour

In this video I take you on a tour of a full and completed sketchbook and chat about searching for joy and delight in my art making..

This sketchbook took about six months to fill up. I know from the outside that it probably appears that my whole life is just full of care-free days spent colouring-in in my sketchbook… but the reality is that I have to actively find time for my sketchbook practice.

So here I wanted to talk about fitting a sketchbook practice into your day-to-day-life and how I do it.

Connection and kindness

When life is busy with client work, running a business, deadlines etc, playing in my sketchbook can feel like a luxury or a bit self-indulgent. But actually I know it is neither a luxury nor an indulgence.

My sketchbook practice is a tool for connecting with my creative self.

For me, creating in my sketchbook is a nurturing act, an act of kindness to myself, a form of self care and self expression. It is actually probably more important to me than lots of the other things in my life which, on the surface, would appear to be far more important.

Prioritising creativity

When I go for a week or more without using my sketchbook I feel a little disconnected from my self, a little bit adrift and a little unanchored from the creative side of me.

I find that creating art is like a homecoming, a grounding, it feels like I’m reconnecting and checking in with my self. It is a way to better understand myself, my world and what I’m interested in. So sometimes I have to actively make time for my sketchbook, to recognise that it is a priority to me and organise my life accordingly.

It is a habit which enriches my life, fills my creative-well and a practice which keeps me inspired and fluent in my art making, my sketchbook is the engine of my art making, so I find time for it, even when I don’t seem to have too much time to spare.

Frequently, I have to literally carve out time for my sketchbook, steal time from somewhere else or utilise the time I have better to ensure I get some time with my sketchbook. For example, this Summer I paused making YouTube videos and these newsletters to give myself more time to make art… This meant I had more time to paint generally and more time to use paint in my sketchbook, use messy materials and take time to play about. Life is always a balancing act and I often have to recalibrate and check-in with myself to ensure the pendulum hasn’t swung too far away from art making.

Small windows of time

When I’m busy I often end up fitting my sketchbook practice in whilst I’m waiting for something to cook, or in bed, or on the phone or whilst watching television with my husband at the end of the day… sometimes these scenarios are not optimal and demand a simplicity of materials, one pen or one pencil, but I find that a small stolen window of time is better than none at all.

I never ever manage to work in my sketchbook every single day.

This sketchbook is an Artist Sketchbook from Daler Rowney which has 54 double page spreads, it took six months to fill up... which means I fill a double page spread about once every four days on average…

I find that little and often keeps the creative conversation alive. I love it when I have a whole afternoon to potter and play in my sketchbook, but sometimes life just doesn’t allow that, so I find what time I can.

Reducing friction

I make using a sketchbook super easy….I carry a small sketchbook and pen in my bag, this massive sketchbook is stored under an armchair in my living room with a box of different art materials and a few brushes which hold water in the handle. All I need to just start, is right there, there is no friction, no need to get materials sorted, no decisions to make at all… it is all just there waiting for me and encouraging me to create…

Making it easy

Is there a way you could make your sketchbook more accessible and easier to use? I think it’s a good question to ask… ‘how do we make creating easier?’, sometimes the answer is about lowering our expectations and sometimes the answer is just about putting your sketchbook where you are most likely to use it….

Nurturing our creativity

This video and blog is about nurturing our creative selves and ways to think about change. As Summer unfurls here I can feel my creative energy shifting and changing. For me it feels like a time of year when I need to nourish and refill. A time to retreat into creativity, a time to replenish, a time to be more introspective...

This energy shift happens for me at this time every year. I think it is just part of how my creativity ebbs and flows.

What does it mean to retreat?

For me the Summer always feels like a good time to retreat a little. When I think of the word retreat I think of quietness, reflection, rest, introspection, a break from the day-to-day, replenishment of energy and restoring of enthusiasm, a tuning-in and listening to inner wisdom, a restorative slice of time which helps to fill the creative well… At this time of year I try and invite-in, carve out, and make space for a little more of this in my life.

Sustaining creativity

How can we best replenish and refill our creative well? It’s a good question to think about and answer. As artists or creative humans how do we each sustain and nourish our creativity in the short and long term. Here are some of the things which help me and which I’m planning to try and do this Summer:

1. WRITING AND REFLECTING

I find that writing helps me to think and to understand. It helps me to hear and articulate my own wisdom. I write about my hopes, my fascinations, what is calling to me, how I want my art to feel, how I want my art-making to feel, What I want to do more of, what I want to do less of, what I want to explore and evolve. Approaching my own art making process with a sense of inquiry and inquisitiveness.

2. READING

When looking to replenish and nurture my creativity I often turn to reading. I love reading about art and know there is so much to learn from other artist’s approaches. I find that researching art history and looking and thinking about the art that I love is an important way for me to better understand my own artistic sensibilities and sensitivities.

3. LOOKING AT ART

I find seeing art in real life to be stimulating. I’ll visit art galleries and try and experience as much art in person as I can, Hastings Contemporary is on my door step and I’d like to visit a few galleries in London if I can muster the effort…

4. LEARNING

I love to learn and often take courses and online classes. There is always something new to learn and I often find that just a small injection of something new or a reminder of something long forgotten can open the doors of possibility…

5. TIME IN NATURE AND IN NEW PLACES

Walks and time in nature make me feel replenished. I have spent too long inside over the last few years. I am planning on taking my sketchbook and my camera on micro adventures. To see what I can find in close-by, yet unexplored corners, I will actively seek things that interest me; shapes, juxtapositions, compositions, colours and textures. Being inquisitive about the world around me usually rewards me with new discoveries…

5. PLAYING ABOUT

I find that using a wide variety of art materials and just playing with them, mixing them, combining them in different ways helps me to think and discover through doing. I try and keep my expectations to a minimum and genuinely mess about…not creating anything of meaning, not expecting something to look good, imperfect, wonky and weird is the goal…

Parcels of time to pause…

So over the Summer I will retreat a little, I will find time to do a little more of the things that will nurture my creativity and I will endeavour to stop doing a few things which don’t serve my creativity.

I will do slightly less of the things I normally do and instead give myself a little time and space to do more of the things which my creativity calls for...writing, reading, learning, spending time in nature and spending time with my art materials with no agenda or expectation of outcome. Doing the things which I know will replenish and nourish me.

I will also rest and daydream and not expect too much of myself, so maybe I won’t do all the things on this list at all…but I will do what feels good. So expect fewer new videos from me over the Summer I’m just slowing down my output a little to find space for creative input…creating a little space to re-fill my well and let new and exciting ideas germinate and grow.

You may like to think about what nourishes and nurtures your own creativity? The following four questions are a great place to start:

• What do I want to START doing?

• What do I want to STOP doing?

• What do I want to do LESS of?

• What do I want to do MORE of?

The beauty of dreams

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. ”

— Eleanor Roosevelt

I have just finished some new paintings. I have named this series of just three paintings The Beauty of Dreams after the quote above. Believing in the beauty of our own dreams seems to me like a potent and powerful spell.

A small act of hope, purpose and magic all mixed into one.

It’s a quote I love and it came to mind as I was finishing these paintings. They have taken a good while to unfurl, I have worked slowly on them for many weeks until they became what they were going to become. Embedded within each one are layers of acrylic paint, detail, line work… small moments of hidden treasure…

When they were nearing the end phase I kept thinking they had a dreamlike quality… there was something about them that felt like they were part twighlight, part dream-state, part bathed in starlight. So when it came to naming them I kept circling back to the idea of dreams and hope…

I initially thought I might call them Mid-Summer Night’s Dreaming but it somehow didn’t feel exactly right. Then I remembered the quote above and I felt like it just suited them….like it was for them.

I try and take my time naming a painting. As the paintings develop I keep a list of words and phrases which occur to me as I work, that have resonance… a running list of possible names or just fragments of thoughts. I think about what I am trying to convey, the feeling that is embodied in the painting...how the painting makes me feel.

Naming a painting is like a small milestone, a closing ceremony, a gift to the painting and the viewer, a mark of completion, a small badge of respect, a sense of identity for the new painting that has been created…

Tuning into our own wisdom…

In this video I chat through some personal thoughts about the art making process... The things I’d like to remember for myself and which I thought may be useful to also share with you.

I’ve just finished five new paintings. I just love how they turned out, but there were some ups and downs along the way… a little wrangling and a few days of challenge. I find the journey of a painting is not always smooth…

Risk and reward

I had a few days in the studio with all of these paintings where I didn’t love what was happening… I thought that perhaps they would never become finished paintings, sometimes that just happens.

If I am wrestling with a painting I often find that adding something completely different, unexpected, something bold, something uncontrolled helps me to get out of a rut. `Sometimes I need to shake things up,

Introducing a little risk can lead to reward. Perhaps a huge sweep of colour or completely painting over sections… I applied this idea to all of these five paintings. At a certain point in each painting I did something bold and unpredictable…I completely changed the colour palette I was using, I painted right over a whole painting, I applied paint in thick uncontrolled daubs and as soon as I took a bold step, I began to see possibility and began to fall in love with them again.

The grit makes the pearl

I dont really want the painting process to always feel easy and simple. I actually relish the challenge of working through the the difficult days, it is part of what I love about being an artist. I appreciate the problem solving...and try and remember that it is the grit in the oyster that makes the pearl…

Capturing wisdom

After I finish a series of paintings, I try to take a moment to reflect on the process, to take stock, to think through what I did, how I did it and what it felt like. To ask myself a few simple questions as a way to better understand myself as an an artist, as a way to clarify my thoughts and to access my own wisdom.

Learning to tap into and trust our own wisdom is so important as artists. This kind of exercise helps to strengthen that muscle. Here are the type of questions I ask myself incase you’d like to do the same:

• What did I learn?

• What worked?

• What do I want to remember?

• What did I enjoy?

• What are my observations on the process?

• What advice do I want to give myself?

• What must I remember for next time?

Sold out

Original Painting: The Wisdom Tree

Love of Pattern

My love of decoration, ornament and pattern has been a life-long love affair.

All of my very earliest childhood memories involve pattern in some way..,the wallpaper in my infant bedroom, the pattern of a dress, a carpet, a bedspread, a plate, the decoration on our neighbour’s biscuit tin when I was only three or four. I see and remember the world via pattern.

The art we make reflects who we are back to us, doesn’t it?. It can be a projection, an extension of who we are, a culmination of our experiences, our sensibilities, our curiosities, our feelings…. And my art definitely celebrates a love of pattern.

Humans are pattern makers

I think perhaps patten also has an instinctual universal appeal too. Humans are pattern makers and pattern seekers. From the earliest times we have added ornament, decoration, motifs and marks to the items in our world, we turn the ordinary into the extraordinary through making our mark on the world. .We have always added pattern, ornamentation, decoration and detail to the items in our lives to make our lives more beautiful.

Humans are pattern seekers

We seek patterns as a way to understand the world.. there is comfort, familiarity and understanding in repetition and repeats…and at it’s most basic form that’s exactly what a pattern is. It’s a shape, a motif, a mark… repeated.

I seem to agree with the saying that ‘repetition makes perfect’…

Books and links

Here are the books I share in the video.

Terry Winters. Paintings, Drawings, Prints 1994–2004 Hardcover, 2005 by Richard Shiff (Author), Rachel Teagle (Author) Published by Yale University Press.

This book is now out of print but you can see more of Terry Winter’s art on his website here

Matisse in the Studio Hardcover – 6 April 2017 by Ellen McBreen (Author) et al, Royal Academy of the Arts

Artist interview

In this video I am interviewed by the wonderful artist Elinor Trier for her new art podcast. We talk about my journey to become an artist, how sketchbooks offer refuge, ritual and reflection, my art work flow and more. If you enjoy nourishing art chats you may just enjoy this…

You can also listen to it as a podcast here