My notebooks are full of little questions I rarely go back to — and if I do, it always seems such an effort to worm my way back into the original excitement of the idea in order to answer them. I could just be drawing something new.
I’m learning, gradually, to phrase the questions as answers, even if only tentative ones. To catch ideas as a sketch or the most fragile of outlines. To just paint the thing and see if, as usual, that solves the conundrum.
It’s a small way of staying in motion.
Sketching through a manuscript last night.
I don’t have a good mental template for goats.
Pigs are also tricky. Their legs are so stiff. I need to spend more time sitting on a fence drawing them.
One of the many excellent reasons to sketch from life is that your mind and hand start to learn the basic lines that make up an animal or person or a movement — the top picture suggest I’ve spent more time drawing people interacting with clothes than drawing goats at all — and what makes a shadow mean things, and where the drama is in tiny far-off airport workers.
I love sketching people in hi-vis.
It’s the same with writing. Taking notes out and about is a good way to get an appreciation of the range of habits and rhythms of interactions, and Angela Slatter has occasionally given me homework in the form of sitting under a tree for an hour and describing the leaves without using the word “green” (but more vehemently).
I don’t have a picture of the tree-description page, but here are some rainy-day notes.
Even if I never go back to refer to these, even if I’m inventing worlds, the act of noticing gets the world into your fingertips, in all its textures and varieties, and it’s there when you need it.
Of course, it doesn’t just give a template. Sketching reminds me when to deviate from a template. Those are the details and textures that bring a picture or a world to life.
How do people actually interact with plinths?
And it’s suprising how often the person holding out their arms and twirling in a cafe is not, as might be the obvious conclusion, a little girl, but a man demonstrating the move to his daughter, who is holding a stuffed tiger and regarding him with doubt.
I am, for secret reasons, keeping an Observation Journal at the moment (if you’re into that sort of thing, people over on Patreon are getting to see a bit more of it, while I collate my thoughts).
It’s been unexpectedly helpful (and in some cases given rise to a terrifying creative velocity) in getting back into art after spending several weeks mostly horizontal.
One of the activities that developed sideways was a personality study of my favourite paints.
Here, to begin with, are some of the favourite paints:
That’s a sample card with dots of Daniel Smith watercolours (the David Taylor palette). The dot cards are so very useful for tiny pieces and fast work and, particularly, for travel. I often refresh them with more paint.
Looking for Observation And Reflection activities I could do, I realised I kept meaning to order tubes of all my favourite colours, and that this was an excellent chance to note which ones they were.
So I just made a list of all the colours from my most-used sample card (above), and then without thinking too much made very silly notes about my thoughts on them. Quinacridone Magenta, for example, “lipsyncs to Dolly Parton”, while Moonglow is “actual magic”.
It was soothing and fun, but also useful information. You can see there ways I use the colours, and how they make me feel, and what they could be. It made me fall a little more in love with them. I adore the tiny jewels on this page, and now when I pick up a colour out of the wildly expensive box of tubes I ordered (finally! this exercise definitely contributed to me getting my act together), I think, “Oh yes, I know you!”
I want to do it again with other tools of the trade. Personal, idiosyncratic opinions on nibs and inks, rulers and blades. It was a gentle and kind way to handle them all again, as well as creating a reference, and falling in love.
Anyway, I’ve been talking with a few friends who have stalled on projects or pursuits recently, and this is for them. Perhaps, with no project in mind, just get out, handle, order, comment on, your tools and materials. Make friends again.
This is for the type of notebook with a spine you can look down when the book is open (hardcover or case bound).
(Edited for clarity)
(Edited again to add: This also works with multiple ribbons. My current version has four.)
Next time I will:
And the journal itself is up as a set on Flickr: USA 2007 Moleskine.
In the grand tradition of not making up my mind until the last possible moment (as usual, some time after take-off) I browsed through travel journals in newsagencies and online trying to determine an optimum combination of categories – should I include expenditure? an itinerary? what about an address book? How much space should be allotted for each day? How did artists organise their travel sketchbooks, if at all? Were journal, diary and sketchbook incompatible?
I settled on the winning combination on the flight over: The debden notebook would retain its usual structure – infodump with index. I put all postcard addresses in there (indexed under “contacts”). Otherwise, it was used for directions, reminders and a futuristic science fiction story involving cryogenic sleep and prosthetic limbs and lawyers on motorcycles and mafia connections and the rule of law (the true hero) and consisting only of the bits in between the action.
The sketchbook was divided into two sections.
Section one was a planner: each page featured four hand-drawn boxes with the date (a sticker), month and day of the week. In these I jotted down a very minimal account of the day, and only missed the last four or so. For a random example, 17 October – Wednesday reads:
Up 9-ish.
Watched part of the Waltons and Little House (guest starring a very young James Cromwell)
Breakfast @ Free Port (“Good food, legal drinks”): cinnamon scrolls.
To North East to wait for Martha to get off work.
Lunch at Bova’s.
Back to Martha’s to drop off a sub for Nick.
Through Eyrie to Presque Isle.
Drove around Presque Isle, monument, lighthouses.
Stopped at visitor centre.
Back to Martha’s for pie. Spoke to C.O. on phone.
Back to farm.
Downloaded photos. Kathy & Mommy organised for me to go to Pittsburgh.
Section two was everything else (I micromanage content, as you can see). The date headers went in as each day came along. I sketched as I could through the day, wrote only a little, and at the end of the day added in any cartoons or drawings (often from photos on my camera or phone) or bits-and-pieces that remained.
I had an idea that if I wanted a list of expenditures I could start from the back, or keep lists of Things to Eat on the index cards in the back pocket, but none of these were necessary.
And the journal itself is up as a set on Flickr: USA 2007 Moleskine.
I did not want to repeat the pattern of previous holidays which resulted in collections (envelopes, packages, bags, boxes) of papers, brochures, tickets, advertisements, envelopes, squashed pennies, packaging, cards and labels.
This time, I implemented a policy I referred to as Cut Things Out and Stick Them In.
Every night, before bed, I had to cut up the papers collected through the day, cut them up, stick the relevant sections into my sketchbook-journal and Throw The Rest Away.
There were a few late nights, but it was not generally an onerous task and tiredness could make me brutally selective. As I carted the glue stick with me, dead time in airports (“the planes in America have never been so safe or so late”) and planes and trains or while other people were in bed could be used productively.
My bags were lighter, there were no folders to sort or store when I arrived home, and I don’t regret throwing out anything I did.
Best of all, the journal was always up to date. I could not show photographs to people, but I could show them scraps and sketches, and when I arrived home, the journal was almost complete: pictures drawn, scraps stuck in, observations made at the time. All that remained was to add in the few pieces that had fallen through the cracks and into the back pocket of the sketchbook: a menu, some currency, a greeting card.
Scraps, however, were not the only things that were stuck in. Before I left, I treated myself to one of the unsung treasures of the stationer’s: numbered stickers. I took a package of black-on-white to label the days in the planner at the start of my sketchbook, and white-on-black to label each day as I progressed through the sketchbook. It was unnecessary but fun, with some of the mild excitement of an advent calendar, and knowing that as each day was sketched and written and pasted, I could mark it off and start a new one with a fresh new sticker.
The sketchbook is here: USA 2007 Moleskine.
Other parts:
I divided the tools I took into two bags: a large ziplock bag in my checked luggage with scissors, brushes, watercolours and so forth; and a smaller bag in my handbag with markers, prismacolors, unipins and mechanical pencil. The glue stick travelled between this smaller bag and my clear-onboard-toiletries-and-liquids-for-inspection bag according to whether or not we were airborne.
And in the end I used only:
The first two were unexpected. I have almost always drawn in pencil or pen. Markers were still unfamiliar territory, unwieldy and permanent and blending poorly. I disliked coloured pencils – using them, what they could and couldn’t do, what art in coloured pencil looked like.
They were, however, the most travel-friendly: light, portable, not messy, quick to use, bold, handy. Both travel in my handbag still and if I am again travelling light, I might leave behind all the excess security blanket of other media.
The last two were used for cutting things up and sticking things in, of which more anon.
The sketchbook is here: USA 2007 Moleskine.
Part 1 is here: What was lugged.
To come:
I knew, when I went to America last October, that I wanted to draw while I was there (I draw every day) and, if possible, to keep a sketch-journal. I’d done this once before, in Melbourne when /Karen/ and I went to Continuum and met Neil Gaiman and Robin Hobb and I had been putting it off doing it again until an occasion justifying the purchase of a Moleskine sketchbook (that first was a present from Deb).
This is what I generally keep in my handbag: Debden notebook (indexed), Moleskine sketchbook, diary, another sketchbook and notebook if I’m in transition, an exercise book if I’m in the middle of a first draft, scratch paper with drawings on the back which I have forgotten to take out and file, a packet of monochrome Pitt markers, a packet of earth tone Pitt markers (new arrival), a pencil box with Prismacolors and a mechanical pencil, a pencil sharpener with shaving catcher. That’s my everyday handbag. If I’m going somewhere art-related after work, I may take another bag with charcoal and pastel pencils, kneadable eraser, water colour pencils, travel watercolours and a larger sketchbook. If I’m going home for the weekend, there will also be at least a document box of paints, paint brush roll, rubber stamp blanks, corner cutter, lino carving tools, stamp pads, dip pen, bottles of ink, more sketchbooks, some pads of paper, watercolour postcards, canvas boards, glue, scissors, fancy paper, scrapbook, ruler, etc.
All this for someone who does most of her drawings in biro on memo pad.
Since I was planning to travel relatively lightly (interesting fact: my total luggage weighed in less than the change in my weight in the last two years) it was impractical to pack on the usual scale.
In the end, I took advantage of large ziplock bags and packed: Unipin pens, Pitt markers, glue stick, scissors, Prismacolour pencils, watercolour pencils, a few inexpensive paintbrushes, numbered stickers, blank labels and index cards and a mechanical pencil.
I agonised over the sketchbook/notebook/diary/travel journal situation until the night before we left, and settled on an A5 moleskine sketchbook for everything related to the trip and my usual debden notebook for everything else (ideas, fiction, notes, transient stuff), with a moleskine cahier for backup (not needed).
Coming Soon:
If you can’t wait to see how it ends, the journal is up as a set on Flickr: USA 2007 Moleskine.
Kathleen Jennings 