New Sketchbook

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A couple of days ago I started a new sketchbook, having  just filled the last one.  I think I was revisiting my school days to decorate the first page like this – I did this sort of thing all the time.  I decorated my compulsory school homework diary, so that each week had a different visual theme.  Oh the hours I spent with the derwents and my diaries.  I think I even have them somewhere.

Here is a page from the last sketchbook, featuring some flowers we shall call “pincushion flowers”.

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Keeping a sketchbook or visual diary was a discipline of my University days – a required part of the life drawing component of the design degree.  It is a great idea, your drawing certainly improves with practice.  These days my sketch book is filled with little idea drawings and little creatures, rather than life drawings.  I don’t get to sketch daily (perhaps I should) but I often sit down for 15 minutes of drawing time with the kids, sometimes more if I am lucky.

The first couple of little people in my new sketchbook are inspired by The Duchess which we watched the other night – the hair, oh the hair!

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They don’t look at all like the actors – but I wasn’t really trying, just enjoying putting pencil to paper.  I enjoy drawing for me, not striving to recreate life as accurately as possible.

Do you have a sketchbook?  What do you draw?  How often?

5 thoughts on “New Sketchbook

  1. Hi Clare, I have just been given my first sketch book and pencils by my very good friend, Lululollylegs. Just wish I could draw!
    Did I spy you in Portmans at the local shopping centre yesterday – If it was you , I was feeling way too shy to come and say hello! Next time I will though!

  2. Hi Claire. I am about 5 pages away from using up my current sketchbook and have another fresh, crisp version waiting in the wings. I’ve always kept one but it used to take years to fill a book. I was getting too caught up in what I “should” draw or what should go in the book. Took the fun out of it to put all that pressure on myself. In the last 3 years I’ve filled 4 and it seems I take it with me everywhere I go now. Any idea that pops in my head is recorded. Bits of pretty papers, stitched pages, drawing, painitng. You name it, it goes in. And it is much more FUN this way!

  3. Wow! I can’t believe each week of your diary had a theme using your derwents! Leanne and I did that too! We got our first box of 72 in year 11 and went crazy with our diaries. We had surf themes and camp themes and boy themes etc. Each week was an artwork unto itself. Those Derwents were our “babies”. We loved them and were so proud to own our first set which we bought with our afterschool job money. I know she still has them, I will ring her today to see if she knows where they are!

  4. I’m in year 7 at highschool and I have 120 Artist Derwents. I think that the decorated diary pages is a great idea, except my diary is full of homework.

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