Keeping Sketchbooks by Martin Ursell

Author:Martin Ursell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785001093
Publisher: Crowood

Here are eight double pages from the Aldous Eveleigh Sketchbooks. The pages sing with colour, life and energy and have a real spirit of place.

The first sketchbook I ever kept was at school. I remember in the art class the schoolmaster said that it was impossible for us to keep a sketchbook using pen and ink. This would be beyond the capabilities of us. Well, I thought about this and wondered why it would be so impossible, so I stitched some paper together and went out for the weekend with pen, ink and the sketchbook. Back in school on Monday I showed the schoolmaster the sketchbook. He was absolutely furious, spitting blood, so that was it really, we were enemies from then on. At the end of the year I remember him saying, looking particularly at me, ‘Anyone who goes to art school I will regard as a personal failure!’

Of course over the years the way I keep a sketchbook has changed. I have sketchbooks going in parallel, one I use everyday for anything I see and then my travel ones and I started keeping my travel sketchbooks when I was at art school. If I wanted to go out drawing I would make a little sketchbook, just stitch some paper together. Anyway, I went on a trip to Tunisia and Sicily, in my first year during the Christmas holidays, I particularly wanted to go there, Paul Clay went there and…, so I made a sketchbook wrapping some old pyjamas around the cover so it looked fitting and that was the first of my travel sketchbooks.

I think it is difficult to give advice on the best way to keep a sketchbook because everyone is different therefore different advice is required depending on who you are talking to. I suppose the first thing to decide is who is it for? Is it for yourself or for other people, applause in other words? Maybe you want to start the book a few pages in and leave the first few pages to fill in later, when you have got into the zone, so that this imaginary viewer will be immediately impressed. For myself, I do not really do it for anybody else, it is nice when people look at it but my sketchbooks are for me. Were I doing it for other people I would make them more ‘user friendly’. I would put the date, where it is and maybe even a few words about what I was thinking whilst I was drawing. I suppose my advice to someone who had just got a sketchbook and wondered how to begin would be this; on the way home with your new sketchbook, pick up some litter and then stick it on the first two pages! Then maybe you can write where you found it, maybe you will think how you stick it down, maybe work on a plan as to how you might stick it down because really the important thing is that you are thinking.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.