Friday, June 04, 2010

Accidental sketchbook

I have just signed up for the Sketchbook project .
I keep promising myself I shall do more sketchbook work, partly for fun partly for design training but somehow, apart from the cuttings and line diagrams I do regularly in a quilting journal I never get around to it. I am not confident with art skills and am always ambushed by the feeling that spending precious time on a book that no-one sees is a waste of time. That even though I know it not to be so. But you know - head and hearts do not always play nicely together.
But this project does not require any great talent but ensures that someone somewhere will probably look at my book.( Indeed I shall be blogging it so in due course I shall be pathetically begging you all to look at it!)
Just the push I needed.

I intended to choose the theme lines and grids as that seemed safe and doable.
But I seem to have accidentally ticked the box asking for a theme to be chosen randomly for me and I got 'The view from here'.
Hmmm... not bad - some ideas already based on the excited scribbles I made on scrap paper of the landscapes when flying into Queenstown, New Zealand whilst cursing myself for leaving the camera in the overhead locker. (Too late now: seatbelt signs on and  look at those fablulous lines and fissures.......!)
And I did want to do some sketchbook work based on the local museum which I see from my room here in Blackburn.
And the theme is only a starting point anyway......
Now, I have to wait for my book to come from the US.
Do you think this occasion justifies the buying of a box of oil pastels I don't really know how to use yet?

6 comments:

Rachel said...

Yes, but only if you have a good play with them in your new sketchbook!

Having been to Queenstown - yes, those mountainsides are quite bewilderingly patterned, aren't they!

Gerrie said...

You need an excuse? LOL

Nancy Anne said...

And how else do you learn if you don't try? :)

Pat said...

It sounds really motivating - hope you have fun with it and it will be good to see the result.

Lisa Walton said...

Definitely - you need all the toys you can get.

California Fiber artist and composer said...

After everything I have read about the sketchbooks your post pushed me over the edge. Like you I am a City and Guilds student who flunked art and has been terrified of it ever since. I started to sign up and said I am not good enough but your post pushed me over to the sketchbook side.