A Sketchbook Tour - summer 2023
Looking through a sketchbook from 2023 - showing how I use my sketchbooks after graduating from the MA.
Hello!
Soooo! I filmed this a few weeks ago and have been slowly editing and pulling together into a post for you. I used to make regular sketchbook videos, but I fell out of the routine once my paid illustrated work - making Picture Books - stepped up, and then I wasn’t sure which ones I had already filmed and which I hadn’t, in rather typical Ella fashion!
But I found the time to go through my old videos recently, and (as far as I have figured out!) the last one I filmed was this from 2022/3 and so I think I can safely pick up from there. If you want to look through my previous sketchbook videos, you can see them here. I also have a bunch I filmed for my Patreon channel1, which I could post. Would you like to see?
Anyway, this is from summer 2023; I don’t think this is strictly in order, I can see I have some more from 2022, looking at my shelves, but anyway, this is the one I filmed, so we’ll hop around in 2022 and 2023 for a bit until we eventually catch up to the present, shall we?! This is a look through an A5 sketchbook, and I wanted to film it because it feels like a good example of the way I use sketchbooks now, after graduating from the MA.
Here’s a sneak peek of the sketchbook, full video with chat and reflections below.
When I was on the MA, and actually for a number of years before, drawing and painting in a sketchbook was something of a daily habit. It was almost exclusively drawings from observation, and they filled up quickly - I must have filled about 25 (at least) books on the MA, and probably as many pre-MA.
Post-MA, I tend to work less frequently, but I try and keep up my sketchbook habit as much as I can, which means they fill up more over the holidays, during weekends, and also, because I’m not a skethbook purist, nor am I organised enough to do it any other way, I scatter in sketches for whichever book I’m working on. So this sketchbook has some of my first sketches in for Dear Vincent, for example.
What stood out while filming this sketchbook was how much my sketches improve, and how quickly, when I am able to put in a sustained period of sketching. In the middle of this sketchbook, for example, I go on holiday, and you can see the improvement in the drawings.
It’s frustrating to work in this way now, if I’m honest, and I wish I could work in a more sustained way in sketchbooks, but the reality of working on books now means that I don’t have time, or the energy, to get a sketchbook out at the end of a full day of sketching or painting in the studio. I reflect on this in the video, along with other thoughts and reflections.
I am aiming to post one of these every month now, until I have caught up to the present, when I’m hoping that posting sketchbook look-thoughs will be good motivation to sketch more frequently, so I have new books to film. We’ll see!
In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this. I’m also listing links to the materials I mention in the video.
Until next time!
Ella xx
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