Drawings

Drawing, particularly in sketchbooks, is a habit, a task, a method, and a consolation. Drawing helps me to observe, record, imagine and reflect. Keeping a sketchbook creates a usable record of knowledge, progress, achievement, and process. It is a focus of my creativity.

For me, its like working without working – after some practice it becomes easy to do like walking or eating and you can do it anywhere and anytime. It provides a personal bank of ideas and these ideas, if not used immediately, can be pursued later when searching for inspiration or solutions. Nevertheless, I have no expectations of the drawing if it is in my sketchbook because the book is never complete – never a finalised piece of work, because as soon as its finished I go onto the next one. However, individual drawings do have the potential to be a work of art in their own right, both as individual pieces and as part a collection if you choose.

This small drawing (above) from my sketchbook was a preparation for the large one (right) which is 60cm by 90cm (very large for me)

Drawing puts you in touch with the hidden side of your brain as its like driving or dreaming. After a while it becomes an automatic process. That’s why I can listen to music or a podcast when I’m doing (and I have to have silence if I’m writing – that’s hard work!). It’s like meditation or mindfulness, unselfconscious and liberating. A drawing can be something that takes on its own character – things just appear, apparently from nowhere. And on reflection when you look at your work and think: “Could I have done this?” it increases personal confidence.

This is a part real/part imagined view of the gliding club on the Long Mynd, where I go gliding. I have seen a view something like this many times from the air so when I sat down to sketch without the view in front of me I could place many of the landscape features fairly well as well as the low dark cloud of an inversion sitting over everything below. Its a bit primitive, dream-like and naive and I like that.

I draw especially when travelling – sitting in airports or train stations is good. Another place is hotel windows. I have done many drawings from hotel windows. When you enter your hotel room (a temporary home for twenty-four hours, sometimes less, sometimes more) you typically walk to the window and look at the view. The next time you do that it might be brushing your teeth after breakfast (although TVs typically take up your attention for that too). Drawing the view from the window makes you really look – really look. It also makes you more ‘picky’ about the rooms you will accept from the hotel receptionist. The one in the Chicago Y I just got, but the one in Caesars Palace, Las Vegas I had to make the mile long trek back to the front desk to ask for.

The Shard and HMS Belfast drawn on a handy bench in front of the Tower of London.

I like to draw when I’m out walking – in the city or the countryside. It helps me relax a bit more during those breaks, but there is also an urgency there – don’t think too much about what you are doing because you need to get on your way again soon. And of course the drawing then becomes a record of when you were in that place at that particular time – it can be a lot of fun to look back on old sketchbooks.