It’s my annual sketchbook challenge, this is the third year running I have held a challenge in July. It’s a fun month of exploring and experimenting with a group of like-minded artists.
This week we moved into daily prompts in the sketchbook challenge, and it is from this daily practice that this week’s insight comes.
We’re at the end of the second week of the challenge. The first week was all about making our sketchbooks, with options to make either a concertina book, a ring bound book, or both.
For this year’s challenge, I made myself examples of both. I have a medium sized concertina book and a small ring-bound book. After spending the first week of July making the books, this week saw us move into daily prompts, with suggestions and ideas from me to spark daily practice and work in these books
Each day I’ve found myself working in both books. Over the course of the week, what I have noticed is that there is a theme I am exploring in the concertina. The theme is about restraint and subtlety. I am using lots of delicate printed collage papers, with subtle washes of colour, or crumpled textures on tissue paper, that meld into the surface of the page when applied. I am also using lots of watery ink, using a hake brush to create swoops of colour and painterly marks. However, although I’m exploring this theme that’s been of interest to me for a while and really enjoying myself, I’m not making pages that are truly experimental. What I am doing is making lovely pages within a theme that’s ongoing. So, the book feels like it will be something of an art object in and of itself.
Similarly, the ring bound book is not lending itself to the kind of unselfconscious experimentation I was hoping to get to in this year’s challenge. Partly because it’s small, at 10 x 10 cm I do not have the space to experiment in the way I want. It feels like this is more of a mark making book, or something I would take away with me if I were going on a trip, where I wanted something for some non-demanding art play or quick sketches and drawing.
What I hadn’t anticipated, is that I would feel such a strong impulse to push into new ideas. Or that I would find the two books I created for the challenge to be unsuitable for this kind of experimentation. The week’s insight about sketchbook practice is that the vehicle for our creative experimentation is important. The size, paper, format and intention have huge significance in what they invite us into.
I’m invested in keeping the concertina lovely. I don’t want to do things like write a shopping list in it which I will do in my regular sketchbooks. It has become an art object, a book that is dedicated to exploring a theme. The ring bound feels more open to varied experiments. Although it’s limited to small play, drawing or mark making and not for the bigger expressions I sometimes want to explore.
How many sketchbooks do you work in at any one time? Do you have different books for different tasks for example?
Hit reply and let me know, I’d love to hear from you.