Scheherazade Sketch-book

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Over my career as a painter, I have built up a considerable collection of  hard-backed black sketch books, I seem to get through two a year. They are strange animals, full of working drawings, ideas, words, poetry and stuck in visual information squirrelled from various sources; to aid inspiration, create moods and document ideas.

When I was a student I found the whole process quite unnatural and I was self-conscious about working in sketch books as if an imaginery critic was looking over my shoulder.  But I got over all that and now I see them objectively.

  Of course they are going to be very personal and consciously naïve by their very nature.  But that is their strength, sketch books are personalized visual diaries, they are the artist’s reference material, full of coded visual information.  They are a means to an end:  hopefully a painting or two!   My sketchbooks are well thumbed, and usually covered in paint, as I often bring them into my studio and prop them up near at hand when I am painting.  They give me clues and annotated instructions and help to guide me, as I compose and paint my pictures.

 

My sketch book is my visual diary, but it is also another vital part of the painting process, so I am posting up a few of my recent sketch book pages that I used when I was painting  my solo exhibition, Scheherazade, which is now showing at The Doorway Gallery, 24 South Fredericks Street, Dublin 2. www.thedoorwaygallery.com, for the rest of November.