Sketchbook Project 2013, Part 3: Greek Temple

Greek Temple, British Museum, London, UK

Back in the late 90s I was part of a fannish mailing list of writers. There were a lot of us, but about a dozen regular posters. We encouraged each other, read stories and bits of stories, critiqued (lovingly), and generally enjoyed ourselves in a productive way. The list became another, differently-named list, and then a blog community which didn't last too long. Gradually though, we found each other online anyway.

Fast forward to the mid-2000s, where I was going to art school in London. One of the writers was going to visit, she posted on her journal. Would anyone like to meet up? Yes!!!

We spent a great couple of days going through the free museums, and clubbing at night. This is still one of my fondest memories.

Sketchbook Project 2013, part 2: Pembroke

Part 1

Door 2: Wall Passage, Pembroke Castle, Pembrokeshire, Wales, the UK.

Henry VIII (yup, that one) spent his childhood here. It's a big, worn, drafty old place, with an enormous cave in the lower levels that dates back to prehistoric times. Pembroke is a tiny town that basically has this huge castle, its huge moat (actually a millpond that extends into a small lake, which proceeds to run into a river that goes 97 miles to the sea), and the ruins of a mill that's older than the castle.

I remember it because this is the first holiday I was ever on which I planned, organised and paid for all by myself. It's also the only holiday I've ever been on by myself. I stayed in an old coaching inn and walked round and round the castle and millpond for three days and felt boring and happy and utterly relaxed. I met a couple of Filipino caregivers, which strengthens my belief that we have infiltrated every level of service everywhere.

I also got catcalled by a car full of redheaded boys. Is this a thing that happens a lot in Wales?

Sketchbook Project 2013, part 1: St Anns Villas

The Sketchbook Project is on again! The books are very small this time, with kind of low-grade paper, but I was planning to use my own paper anyway, no worries.

I am doing a chronicle of doors: One door, one painting, one memory. Some of them from pictures I took, some I can only remember (probably inaccurately). All drawn freehand and then watercoloured and labelled. The memory goes on the opposite page. There are only 15 pages, so I have plenty of time to get it done before January.

Door 1: Front door, 10 St. Anns Villas, Holland Park, London, UK. Drawn from memory.

I lived here with my cousins in a beautiful garden flat with glassed-in stairs and dining room. One time I was going out with one of my cousins. Nic loves the kind of hip-hop jeans that hang off your arse, and always forgot to wear a belt with them. He slammed the door to secure it, and his jeans fell to his ankles, leaving him in boxers on the sidewalk. He grabbed them back up again, but I laughed so hard I had to sit on the pavement before I had enough breath to get going. Luckily no one else was around!

Staedler Artliner and Pelikan watercolours with Blue Heron waterbrushes on Arturo paper. I love this paper so much, you guys. Lettered in Pen & Ink Sketch extra fine fountain pen. All the doors will be done this way.

last pages

Last dirigibles from the Sketchbook Project. It'll feel strange not to have that notebook with me wherever I go.

Things I learned, which may only apply to me:

Clouds make everything better (or at least more three-dimensional).

You'll always have some pretty crap pages. Don't fixate, just move on to your next idea.

You think there'll be time to do the cover. There won't. Do that first.

Prang kids' watercolours are not only easier, but nicer to use than you'd think.

Goodbye and good luck, sketchbook.

The inevitable post-submission spiral of panic

I SENT IT I SENT IT I SENT IT

The sketchbook is safe in LBC and ready to wing its merry way westward. Now I'm finally allowing myself to look at other people's work.

And I'm flipping out.

I haven't completed a project in so long that my massive inferiority complex, dormant these many months, has come roaring out of its cave again, ready to engage.

I mean, look at this stuff. Just look at it. Alina Chua's beautiful watercolours and pen work. Nicole Deyton's idea for an epistolary narrative with illustrated articles straight out of alternate-universe issues of Popular Science. Rossana Bossu's sensitive, wondrous illustrations. And that's after 15 minutes on Google.

I mean, I'm happy with a lot of my work, I just can't shake the knowledge that hundreds of people are going to be thumbing through it, thinking hmph, I've seen better. And that's normal, and part of being an artist, and it's actually true and something I have to deal with unless I want to live in a cave for the rest of my life and never show my art in public again.

But I don't have to like it.

--

Will be posting the last of the notebook and thoughts on the process of creating it, soon.

ALMOST DONE part 2

Some of these have quite haphazard cropping! I need to clean them up for my upcoming portfolio site.






My favourite, a mash-up of Gibson and Hogarth (and my own silly notions).

ALMOST DONE

Submersibles first, as I really think I did a better job with the dirigibles.

The last one may have been subconsciously inspired by Pushing Daisies' Darling Mermaid Darlings.

oh god mustn't panic

More Sketchbook Project work.

This one I left un-levelled (Photoshoppers, you know what I mean!) to show the ink wash.

The last one is for my mom, who was there, and Lucy Knisley, who drew the inspiring (and sometimes depressing) French Milk, now one of my go-to travelogues.

I need to get this book in the mail by New Year, and I am less than half done. Another job I'm doing turned out to be much more challenging than I'd expected, too. It makes me depressed, but I might have better things to do with my time.

sketchbook project

Here are some things I've been doing for The Sketchbook Project. The theme is Dirigibles and Submersibles.