Starting a new Sketchbook

Welcome,

and thank you all for being here. This is a little update video on my ‘First page nerves’ live stream post [linked at the bottom]

I thought I would share the finished spread and give a bit of commentary on the process.

The whole purpose of the ‘First page nerves’’ post was to highlight how to overcome that fear of messing up your sketchbook or blank page or spread. Everyone encounters this at some point and it is regularly discussed on Substack & art blogs the world over.

If for some reason you have been living in a cave for the last decade, here it is again reformatted by me 😜.

I initially scheduled the live stream as a way to show how we can all be a little too precious about the first page spread and the nerves it can create. This was a new Hannemuhle Nostalgie sketchbook that I had been putting off using as I had a few others on the go but wanted to do some larger format sketching.

It was the larger format that gave me the challenge in the end as I expected. That is a lot of paper to fill with marks and paint!

I explain in the video there are different ways to overcome the nerves of the blank page and the ‘composition splodge’ is just one of them. Other artists have described this so much better than me but you get the idea. I could have just messed about with colour and put my name and details over the top. At the last minute I was inspired by the ‘Kelp Canteen’ from my day out plein air sketching the day before.
With the ‘splodge’ method already firmly in my mind I tried to combine the two methods of using a splodge and using the image. It didn’t really end up as I thought but then again I didn’t really have a good enough plan. I was focusing on the live stream and getting something on that first page.

I’m not too displeased with the result and at least the ‘precious book’ has now been christened. The paper took water fairly well but as always I probably used too much!

It is more a mixed media piece with some Posca, watercolour paint, pencils and some ink lines.

The main point is you just need to do something rather than nothing and I’m glad I could show you this and talk about the process that followed.
How could I of improved this?
Well if I had planned the whole thing a little better - the colours, composition and the photo I took I’m sure the results would have been different. It was all a bit spontaneous and somewhat frantic in the end. I hope you enjoyed the process too. - I did

Best ‘one armed’ wishes from sunny Cornwall
Carl

PS

Remember my new Focus On series…#3 is now up - alcohol markers is the theme. These are not emailed to everyone to save your inboxes from too much me!!

🔎 Focus on... series