I spend a lot of time drawing and thinking in my sketchbooks. I like the way I can close them to contain & hide the drawings. As they fill up they become little log books of my life and I flick through them periodically to see what I was obsessed with at any particular time. I generally don’t have different sketchbooks for different types of work, I tend to flit from subject to subject within each book until they are full.
Sketchbook drawings made in situ, concentrating on colour and mark making.
A selection of sketchbook drawings made in various museums and galleries.
after Watteau 'Voulez-vous triompher des Belles', The Wallace Collection
after Tiepolo ‘The building of the Trojan Horse’, detail, National Gallery
after Cezanne ‘The Card Players’, The Courtauld Gallery
after Peter Paul Rubens 'Minerva protects Pax from Mars ('Peace and War')
after Jan Steen’s The Effects of Intemperance
Whalebone chess pieces, AD900s-1000s, Anglo Saxon. The British Museum
Frans Hals, detail from Family Group in a Landscape, c.1647-50, The National Gallery
A Lewis Chess piece, walrus ivory, c.1150-1175, The British Museum
Possible Anthony Van Dyck, Drunken Silenus supported by the Satyrs, c.1620, The National Gallery
Adriaen Brouwer, Tavern Scene, c.1635, The National Gallery
Rembrandt, Portrait of Hendrickje Stoffels, c.1654-6, The National Gallery
detail from Bartolome Bermejo’s Despla Pieta, 1490, The National Gallery
Degas, Portrait of Elena Carafa, c.1875, The National Gallery
Paula Rego, The Cell, 1997. The MK Gallery
detail from a Benin Bronze, 16th Century, The British Museum
William Blake, The Agony in the Garden, C.1799-1800, Tate Britain
The Le Nain Brothers, Four Figures at a Table, c.1643, The National Gallery
This small rocky island situated in The Bristol Channel off the North Devon coast is my one of my favourite places to return to and draw. From sheer granite cliffs to gentle grassy slopes with massive open skies and an abundance of wildlife, there is such diversity within its 1.5 square miles.
The light in this hilly South West corner of Ireland can be incredible. When the sun is out and the westerly winds blow, the shadow of clouds morph continually across the undulations in the landscape making it such an exciting challenge to draw.
The vast, undulating landscape of Wiltshire is one I find myself drawn to. Wilder and more exposed than neat & tidy neighbouring Hampshire, the connection to the past is palpable, and the views breathtaking.
I’ve been looking through my collection of old photographs and making quick sketches thinking about the characters and how I might portray them.
On this holiday in the South of France, I pre-washed each sketchbook page with a warm tones of sepia ink, before later drawing over with colour pencils, graphite and biro.
This series of sketchbook studies are all mixed media experiments using a combination of ink, gouache, pen and colour pencil.
A small selection of pages taken from a few of my many sketchbooks.
