Sketching from life...

I went sketching while I walked the dog at the weekend, it was time. I left it too late and had to rush in the end but I got out there and did a few sketches... I prepared the pages before hand, but in the mud and the cold it really was a fiddle, with all my pencils etc.. I realised I like using all sorts of pencils, pens and paints, which means it's all a bit tricky. I don't have one favourite pencil or pen, so I use all that I have. With cold sticky fingers, holding them all at once and drawing is hard. But I still enjoyed it and will go again when it stops raining! I was being drawn to the houses hidden in the trees and the structures that offered lines and blocks of texture. I love the shapes and textures that the trees make from a distance. I realised that my better drawings worked when my intention was to make the scene my own rather than to replicate what I see. If I want to replicate it I take a photo, and if I am inspired to paint and make something different using that reference, I already know what pencils and colours I want to use, so I get the sketchbook out.

So here are some sketches above and I have singled out three of my favourite pages, which were done at home before I went, thinking of landscapes for my narrative work. I look over these and already see the core of something I can take into my own children's books... slowly feeding the new work, and making sense of it so I can replicate it in the studio.