Semi-Solo Europe Week 2: Now in Color
I went on a sketchbook retreat and it was fun
Ciao!
I spent last week drawing with the talented illustrator Sarah Dyer at a farmhouse on the coast in Puglia. And it was as dreamy as it sounds.
My goal was to play with color and improve my observational drawing. And while I did do those things, the biggest learning was actually the discipline of “Sketchbooking.”
Turns out that the SKETCHBOOK is an art unto itself. There are artists who specialize in sketchbooking, like Emma Carlisle and Sarah Von Dongen. Like Sarah, they master using the spread as their canvas and building worlds in their sketchbooks.
As a designer trained in thinking about the end product, this was a hard concept for me. What are we sketching for? And If it’s not for something specific, what is the point? Throughout the week, I learned that the process is the goal. This analogy clicked: sketchbook drawing is like a workout, something you do to stay in shape. There might be a big race coming up, or it might just be for general wellness and both are equally beneficial.
If you’ve been reading along, you might notice a theme. Embracing the process and being grounded in the moment is actually kind of the point of my entire trip. I don’t need to know what the end result of my time off will be, and there might not even be one besides the experience itself. I swear I didn’t even plan this it just wrapped itself up in a nice little analogy for me. Thank you Substack gods!
NOW to the drawings: Sarah taught us lots of ways to use our sketchbooks. All of them aim to create a sense of place. The sketchbook ends up as an archive of where it has been. Can i continue the analogy there? I am an archive of where I’ve been? Maybe not.
My favorite is a collection. A collection can be anything: Boats in the harbor, flowers around the farm, phrases of your favorite fellow retreater. Having multiple on a page makes all of them look better and that is called optical illusion.
You can also play with negative space. This is especially helpful in not drawing things you don’t like drawing. Life hack!
Another important sketchbook lesson is when to restrain and when to let loose. My most successful sketches are those where I really limited my color palette. When that is controlled, you can be more free to overlap, collage, play with scale and not get everything perfect without it looking too crazy.
inally, we got to draw a baby goat. No big lesson here just cuteness.
Have you ever wanted to bring up something hard in conversation but had to jump through various conversational hoops to get there without being too jarring? That was me all week trying to explain myself.
I loved Sarah and all of her little British sound bites. Watch out America I’m bringing “Soz” back with me. Massive Soz.
Thanks for following along my travels! Here’s a little photo to prove I was there and that I figured out how to do my hair by the last night’s “gallery opening” despite the hard Puglia water. I’m in Paris now drawing and buying art supplies (and a really good bag). More on that next week!
Love all of this. Especially the invitation to process and create.
I love also the little backgrounds you put your sketches on to photograph them 🙂