Logbooks and sketchbooks

Every student signing on to an OCA course is expected to keep a logbook/journal. Since I have
kept a logbook recording exhibitions, workshops, critical assessments of my own work and images that inspire or are thought provoking in any way for a several years, I was not concerned about this concept although I realised that I do need to develop my thoughts and think more about why a particular image is inspiring or not. It is not enough just to paste a pretty image in a book and say “this is good”! which is what I have, lazily, been prone to do.

A student studying any fine art courses is expected to also keep sketchbooks. These are seen by the tutor assigned to the student and also as part of the assessment process. Not a problem for an artist surely?

However, although I have kept sketchbooks for as long as I have rediscovered art, I do not like people looking at them.   Until I read a comment by an artist calledLinda Wu in Jane Stobart’s new book – Extraordinary Sketchbooks – I hadn’t understood why I felt so secretive about my sketchbooks. Linda says that she found the idea of keeping a sketchbook “quite alien” to her and would produce sketchbooks retrospectively purely for assessment purposes.  This sounded like a good idea! She did not “want to expose my ideas and obsessions to criticism”.  Now she says that “once I became more comfortable with the concept I regretted not having valued the process earlier”.

So criticism of my sketchbooks, perhaps being too untidy, too illogical, not “good enough” lay at the bottom of my unease.  On looking through "Extraordinary Sketchbooks" with a critical eye i.e. by looking and deciding what appealed to me and what didn’t – a very subjective decision I know - I found that one sketchbook that was immaculate, very organised, looking ready to be printed as a book and the one that I envisaged as the “correct” way to keep a sketchbook and the one that I had assumed I should aspire to was the one that inspired me the least! 

I have decided to keep specific sketchbooks for the project work, but will include other sketchbooks for the assessment.  One of the books I will include is what I refer to as my doodle book. This is the book I keep by my chair and often doodle in when watching TV. Immediately I call it a doodle, rather than a drawing, it loses the preciousness and I feel free to make mistakes and to play around with shapes and designs. Weird how the brain works.

I had just started a new doodle book and decided to play around in it with a couple of idea I had had for the first project.   I have chosen the Cedars at Attingham Park, a National Trust property in Shropshire that I love and visit most weeks. I love the Cedars – and always visit them – feel almost a spiritual connection to them – so they were the most obvious subject to choose for the project.  As I sketched them I had noticed the negative shapes of the trunks and branches and also the outline of the top of the trees against the sky, so decided to play with the ides in my doodle book. 

I enjoyed the process and have concluded that perhaps there is not a right way or a wrong way – the only way is what works for the individual.