Sketchbooks update...

I am happy to describe the bulk of my body of work as sketchbooks.
A little update...at the last count I had 11 sketchbooks each documenting life through my eyes. They are at varying stages but most of them are actually complete, each one containing different themes and sometimes working methods. They are not books to be developed from. They are my outpourings, to be closed again once read. Completing sketchbooks for me is a necessity. I see them all as final, completed pieces of work to be displayed in my exhibition space at the end of the course. Without them nothing else in my body of work would make sense. I'm not yet sure how they will be displayed but that'll become clear later down the line.
For now I shall just continue as I mean to go on...sketchbook 12 on the go!

Illustrations become more digital...

As always I've been enjoying my drawing but I felt like I wanted to continue to develop it in more of a digital manner. I played around with Photoshop in a similar way to how I ask my students to explore it and added colour to my work.

I feel like my drawings have started to become something else without losing their hand rendered, imperfect feel. I very much like the flat quality of the colour that you are able to apply when working digitally. This may be the next step in the evolution of my drawings. I now envisage some of them to be large scale and not the small drawings hidden away in my sketchbook. This is not somewhere I thought I would be!

I have even thought about combining images on the same canvas and subtracting any background that appears.  I am still happy with the idea of working with 'families' of objects and grouping things together. Eventually the combination of objects may be quite mixed, perhaps a form of self portrait that describes me through objects around me on a daily basis. This again constantly links back to my initial theme of documenting the world around me and looking for beauty in the ordinary.

Thinking about talking...

Last week we had to present our recent work to the rest of the group. As usual I became mute-like whilst everyone was able to articulate about their work and ideas. I realised I may be selling myself short by not discussing my work in depth with others. How are they expected to understand it if I am unable to lead them in to it?
I'm sure many people think I'm just the girl who draws objects and there's nothing more to it than that! Should I be concerned about that? I actually quite like the idea that some people may look no further than face value. After all, what's wrong with simply enjoying drawing? However, maybe I should talk about the many levels to my work, my fear of being left all alone and the accumulation of 'stuff' that I surround myself with to feel safe and make me temporarliy happy...Then again, if people want to look deeper, they can do.
I'll only let people in to my world if they really want to enter it!