Louise Reynolds shares her sketchbook practice with us, in this instalment of our monthly feature Inside the Sketchbook. Louise is a student of the Royal Drawing School in London, and a contributor to Jackson’s blog, regularly sharing her art materials knowledge.
My sketchbooks are inconsistent, as they should be! I use them for briefly jotting down ideas or plans for work, to make observational studies in, and the odd resolved work that I’ll make for my own enjoyment. I think having the freedom to make a range from basic scribbles to more considered drawing is essential to a sketchbook being a genuinely useful tool. I mostly like to use A4 hardback sketchbooks when I’m drawing at home or in the studio, but also like to carry around an A5 one in my bag so that I can jot down any ideas that may crop up.
It’s really important for artists to have a space to make really bad drawings, and I’m happy to admit that a lot of the pages of my sketchbooks aren’t worth a photo. It’s the only place free from critical eyes, so we should relish in this freedom. It’s better to go through all of the awkward and difficult thinking stages of making work in our books than on final surfaces. I really admire artists who can maintain beautiful books cover to cover, but I wonder what their secret ones look like.
On the occasion that I make a more resolved work in my sketchbook, it’s just for my own enjoyment and these usually don’t go anywhere outside of the covers. It’s almost the only place as an artist that I feel the works are completely my own, and aren’t made to face a public. So I feel very little pressure to imbue them with any meaning, they are simply me enjoying using my materials. I think having this space to make for yourself is very important for artists to not lose that essential love of making things without the pressures that come with making work to present.
The observational drawings in my sketchbook are often from my gallery and museum visits. Having a personally curated record of artworks that have inspired me is useful when planning my own compositions, and I draw a lot of inspiration from the historical artists I respect. Often the act of spending time and drawing from an artwork subconsciously imprints it in your mind. There are plenty of times I have looked back on my sketches and thought that they reminded me compositionally, or pose wise, of something that has cropped up in a recent imaginative work. Many of the studies pictured here are from the National Gallery, the British Museum, drawings of friends, observing my environment, and from my recent travels in Florence where I was completing a residency.
Conceptually my work is inspired by fleeting phrases and themes in the current news, so my sketchbooks are littered with potential titles or stories that catch my attention from my reading. I then transform these from their original source to make something strange and new, which is how I feel we process the news in our current time, in a world where serious world events overlap with clickbait and gossip. I feel that the sketchbooks help me in this process of crossing distant wires, where I can leaf through the pages and immediately see the relationship between a tabloid headline, an artwork I’ve seen, an image I’ve imagined, and germinate them into something new.
When it comes to preparing to make an artwork, I tend not to plan too heavily. I’ll usually have a central motif established in the sketch, but I tend to leave the possibility for invention wide open. There is a part of me that feels resistant to over planning my works in my sketchbook, because at that point the work becomes the sketch, and I don’t love to then feel that I’m repeating myself. I refer to my sketchbooks when making my work to remind myself of any plans I may have made, or to seek out inspiration. I often find myself hunting through my drawings in my sketchbook when I find myself in a visual rut, to remind myself of the artworks or artefacts that have inspired me.
I also use my sketchbooks to carry loose paper, or will rip out drawings from them to stick on my studio wall whilst I’m making my work. I find it easier than carrying around a little folder, for ease of being able to throw it in my bag, and the useful pressure of the paper on both sides keeping loose sheets completely flat and in place. Quite often I’ll lean on my closed sketchbook and use it as a little drawing board. This is why I have such a stack of loose papers that are now wedged into my books. I also sometimes rip out pages and will tape them together to make a larger sheet to work on, that’s then easily folded up again and put back in the book. For me, sketchbooks should be treated simply as paper carriers too, as much as they can be beautiful objects when pristine.
In my sketchbooks I use a variety of drawing media, primarily graphite, coloured pencils, pens, watercolours and inks. These will always be media that firmly attach to the page, I really dislike using charcoal or pastel and then having the image transfer across pages or dust falling out. Sometimes I’ll do material or colour tests for another drawn work, but most of my sketchbook work is about visual or compositional planning rather than material.
Materials Used
Koh-i-noor Mondeluz Aquarell Coloured Pencils
Faber-Castell Series 9000 Graphite Pencil
Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pen India Ink Black Set of 6
Sennelier Ink 30 ml Cobalt Blue
About Louise Reynolds
Louise Reynolds is a figurative artist from Hamilton, Scotland. She currently studies at the Royal Drawing School on their postgraduate programme, The Drawing Year, and graduated from Fine Art at the Glasgow School of Art in 2020 with first-class honours. Habitually reading the news provides a point of departure for her work, by combining prevailing and fad narratives into a vision of a dystopian present and future. She is interested in the bewildering oversaturation of media we consume, and how little of it we can fully understand. Through this she strives to make works with glimmers of the familiar, with the core inspiration slightly out of reach. Elements of fantasy, distortion and the surreal combine with a dedication to observational drawing, to form a personal magical realism. She primarily works in coloured pencil, etching, and oil paint.
Further Reading
The Art of Drawing and Observation by Jarvis Brookfield
Bill Murphy on Combining Materials to Reinvigorate His Drawing Practice
Developing a Daily Drawing Practice With the Royal Drawing School
Shop Sketchbooks on jacksonsart.com
It is always interesting to hear about and
look “over the shoulder” on fellow artists.
Great article and photos of some interesting
sketchbooks. Thanks for showing us your
talents.
What a refreshingly honest account of
her working style. Louise is creativity
and its haphazard process personified.
She shows wonderful movement in her
characters. Such a rare talent and I wish
all the successes to come!
Thank you for this glimpse into your
sketchbooks. What a wonderful mix of
styles and subjects. My sketchbooks are a
mess. A huge mishmash of more worked up
drawings, quick thumbnails, shopping lists,
phone messages….I could never keep one of
those curated, made for youtube versions.
It’s not how my brain works.
Nice article. Some really nice drawings.
Thanks
What a generous open honest and
thoughtful article. So interesting. And
inspiring. Thank you!