As I began to redevelop this site to be a truer representation of my practice I realised a crucial element was missing. It makes me smile as I have strong memories of hoping the glue would dry in time for the deadline on sketchbooks for A-level and beyond. A true love and understanding of the role sketchbooks can play in the development of work dawned much later in my career. Ruth Franklin (and here) when teaching on City Lit’s Ceramics Diploma introduced me to mono printing amongst many drawing based research techniques I’ll be forever grateful for. Now when I am developing work it is a pleasure to build and revisit pages of a sketchbook. I like to use magazines, backs of things, string, staple and gather layers together. It creates textures and presents composition options, all helping to visualise the three dimensional work plus avoids pages always starting as blank, forbidding canvasses.
Strata I Sketchbook
Documenting this sketchbook helped hone why they’re such a key part of how I develop work. Continually reframing the composition of pages and elements I revisited the textures, surfaces and shapes I was interested in when putting the pages together. I tend to work with several projects in mind with so much not realised in sculptural form. Sketchbooks continue alongside making and documenting and bringing them online has added another dimension to the research and revisiting process. Sketchbook highlights Strata I SketchbookContinue reading “Strata I Sketchbook”
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