Theme – The everyday

All the work I produce for this course will be based on the theme ‘the everyday’.  I will try finding the extraordinary in the ordinary and being aware of your everyday surroundings and how you can incorporate that into a sketchbook. 

For instance, yesterday I visited my son at his University.  I was looking at his guitar against the wall and noticed the high-contrast colours.  I then looked deeper and noticed the sound hole of the guitar and the patterns on the wood.  The texture of the strings.  The way the wood on the fretboard developed finger marks. 

Looking at other things, I was intrigued by the label design of a bottle of Shanky’s Whip, and I also noticed a Lego tiger he built just for fun.

I have taken photos and already have content to illustrate in my sketchbook.  This is after a regular visit to my son, which I usually do once every second week.  I noticed that the guitar, Lego tiger and the liqueur logo have similar colours and could be pulled together to convey a visual language.

Observing Emma’s sketchbook

Emma’s sketchbook can be found at the following link:

https://oca.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=9b0ce6cd-7b9d-49a1-ad38-addd011d7420

Each artist will have a sketchbook that is an extension of their observation, methodology, medium preference and even their personality.  Dr Emma Powell works with photographs, lists of words and bits of printmaking.  She has one large sketchbook that can house everything she wants to collect and explore for six months at a time.  I noticed she creates pockets with clips and pins to keep additional pieces of paper and add-in’s together.  She also uses a bright Post-it to write a description or keyword of the sketchbook page, so she knows at first glance what she is looking at.

I like that she collects the photographs in her sketchbook, then sketch them out and develops them further from the sketches.  She then selects the sketches that are the most successful, and will then photograph the project in another way; for instance, if she explored trees with intersecting branches, she would photograph other objects intersecting with each other.

She will then decide in which direction she wants to take the project.  In this case, she decided to further develop the trees by testing different printing methods and colour combinations that she would not normally use, observing the effects she could get and hoping for happy accidents by not controlling the colours she was using.  I especially love this part of her sketchbook because we can routinely go to our preferred colour palette and get stuck there. 

I have noticed that Emma might go onto another project in the midst of an existing project and return to a project at a later stage.  This is an eye-opener because I tend to have the mindset you should complete an idea in your sketchbook before moving on.  Emma’s workflow shows it is acceptable if an idea sits there for some time and even might not be developed further.  It is also refreshing to learn this, as Dr Emma Powell says, “we have to remember that our sketchbooks are not sanitised, finished items – they are receptacles that show our creative journey from start to finish.”  I usually feel I should resolve every idea I put in my sketchbook, similar to what we were taught as children, “finish what you have started”.  Using an approach of “putting a pin into” unresolved pieces for the time being, could exhilarate my workflow and allow me to explore more ideas.  I then can choose the best out of a more extensive range.

At times Emma decides to simplify an image or cut it out of newspaper and use the newspaper cut-outs as stencils.  She will experiment with scratching into the prints or even painting into the prints and arranging them into different sequences. 

Sequencing can be an effective exploration method, especially when working on book covers or spreads in books.  In Assignment 5 of Graphic Design Core Concepts, I realised mid-project that sequencing is integral to design and should be explored in the sketchbook at the very beginning of the design process.  Paging through a book where the pages seamlessly flow to one another elevates the readers’ experience.

Emma uses different clips in her sketchbook.  Small clips, large bulldog clips, paperclips, staplers and even sewing thread tying elements together.   She will clip small prints or pieces of paper together and add them to the existing sketchbook page.  This is a great idea that I would like to do in my sketchbook as well.  You can then unclip the stack of sketches and arrange them around or pack them into a sequence you prefer.

Clipping a stack together can be useful when testing different papers.  The stack can easily be unclipped, and the pieces of paper are loose, so you can feel the thickness and texture of the paper.

I have noticed that Emma will incorporate whatever she is working on at that moment.  It could be work-related, a personal project or a course she attended on that particular day.  This iterates the practice of keeping an everyday sketchbook.  She even includes mistakes she can learn from in her sketchbook as a reminder not to make the same mistake twice.

Using words in your sketchbook

I usually do my spider diagram and word exploration on a separate piece of paper which end up in the bin once I have recorded it in my Learning Log.  I have noticed that Dr Emma Powell incorporates her word explorations into her sketchbook.  I think this is ideal for keeping a record and an unbroken chain of your thought process over time.

In a way, your sketchbook can be a diary of your thoughts at that particular time.  That time when you worked on a certain project and went to the, e.g. Organic Market on that same day you saw a pattern on a musical instrument that fed into your current project.  In other words, connecting time with your sketchbook.  This can be relevant when exploring emotions.  My father passed away in September 2022 and I was very sad over that time.  My illustrations were careless, stiff and unfinished.  Linking that time with the work I was producing can generate an accurate understanding to convey the emotions I felt then.  I can return to that time in my sketchbook if I need to tap into the emotion to recreate it for a narrative.

My thoughts and visual references are all over the place at the moment.  I make notes on my phone, take photos on my phone and on my camera roll.  I also have several sketchbooks, digital sketchbooks, pieces of loose paper and spider diagrams.  I had times when I couldn’t remember where I had written down or seen an idea I had.  Keeping one large sketchbook can be ideal for gathering my ideas, so nothing gets forgotten or lost, and ideas are easy to retrieve. 

Another method Emma uses that I would like to use as well, is taking the Alphabet or a Thesaurus and using it as a prompt for generating more words.  She was exploring letterpress terms from A-Z in her sketchbook.  In some of her projects she uses a process of selecting what will work the best and narrowing it down even further.  She then takes those words and puts them into pictures.  Learning from her method, you can then explore drawing the object, for instance, in a foggy or misty way, or making squares round and the rounded shapes, squares etc.  The elements can be cut out from paper, folded into structures, or cropped into circular shapes, squares, or long strips.  Overlapping and layering the images is another option.  The sky is the limit when taking this approach.

I often have a problem with the centre of my sketchbook and drawing or painting over that area without distorting the image.  Emma does her spreads on a different piece of paper and just staples it into the sketchbook to stay in place.

Sketchbook tips and trick

• Use a tear-off palette under your working page to avoid ink bleeding onto your other pages.
• Use recycled plastic sheets to protect your page, especially if you’ve been working with pastel or charcoal.
• Plastic file dividers can be cut to size to divide your sketchbook into sections or create pockets.
• You can laminate a sheet of your art and use it as a barrier to avoid bleeding onto other paper or as a placemark.