REVIEWING CRITICALLY?

Oh hey,

to critically review your sketchbook(s),, too reveal any given fears, analyzing how you work, analyzing you progress, your rhythms,, (but what if you have a fear of this blank page).

Anyway back to the point in hand, here are four, precisely four, actually maybe five images from my collection of sketchbooks dedicated wholeheartedly[of course] to this project.

I struggle to work in one only, it makes me uncomfortable.

I therefore have kept three, an A5 visual journal, hard-backed, plain paged, this is my main comfort zone, it is for visual stimulation, ideas, notes, samples etc etc. Book number two is a little pocket sized drawing book, to explore into my theme.

I am uncertain as to how i feel about my sketchbooks, I believe them to be little on the non-full side of life, although I am happy with their progress. The visual aspect of a sketchbook is incredibly important to me, if a page isn't visually stimulating, if the combination of textures doesn't quite sit right in my eyes I find it almost impossible to work in. Within that what I do find of great interest is the process of painting over. I feel comfortable with my sketchbook because if i don't like something to the extent of disgust i enjoy the process of painting over and re working on top, i like the remains, the skeletons of previous work it leaves behind, honest skeletons.. 

Also Also text and notes is key for me. I don't actually know why. I just need it, for unlocking and understanding, i think it would eat me if i didn't scribble notes while working. My mind would be like a stuck record, caught on a phrase, intent on repeat.

In terms of the contextual I am not particularly wonderful at clearly expressing information about relevant artists or trips or visits I have taken. I seem to have great knack for sticking in an image of an artists work that i have been intrigued by but instead of writing next to it about this specific work and what interest it has to me. I'll have gotten lost on an entirely different chain of thought and be rabbiting on about that. But is this necessarily a bad thing? For on lookers perhaps... but to me, the relevant information will be there somewhere, just not maybe where it "should" be. I like it, it forces me to read through previous notes, jogging my memory of forgotten rabbit trails,,,,

Also more artist research and awareness is needed most definitely, even to the extent that my sketchbook is looking a little naked on the artist front.

 

Content. I am happy with the development of the project, but maybe I'm not. It could have gotten a little lost,, I have been dealing with a wallpaper sample (see below) which leads it self onto botany Where i have focused on parsley and looking at ways of distorting it almost, playing around with the idea of creating a fool (either the viewer or the parsley itself). A fools paradise perhaps_

I think my ideas have developed well through the adaption of the parsley, but could definitely benefit from more of my drawings being worked into stitch and fabric. Also I wonder whether i should of spent more initial time researching into my chosen wallpaper before jumping at the experimenting,,,,,

FRESH START. STRAIGHT UP.

Here lies a wallpaper sample, "Fools Parsley", designed by the man Charles Francis Annesley Voysey. This here sample is the basis for my Sleuths, Spies and Lies project, the spinning point if you will..

Fools Parsley is in fact poisonous.. intriguing.

Dog

My peculiar looking dog and I, unfortunately we are not as good friends as this photograph may suggest, although i have grown a little fond of him and his rather under the weather looking form...