September: An Update
September has been a busy month and it feels as though all sorts of things have happened. I launched my first ever zine, closely followed by the launch of my second ever zine and I started the second year of my masters degree. I have more limited edition prints on their way to the shop at the end of this week, and I got married on the 16th of the month. There are no pictures that go directly with the text, so I’ve interspersed some sketchbook bits - hope thats OK!
With all of these things happening, I’ve been really aware that my time to draw and experiment had the potential to be squeezed out and I wanted to make sure that I safeguarded time for drawing in my sketchbook or experimenting with imaginative drawing. This is because it is an expectation of my masters degree, but also, and most importantly, drawing has always been something I do for me and I really, really miss it when it slips out of my routine. I also wanted to make sure that I was being kind to myself and not forcing anything when I didn’t feel like it or if I was feeling overwhelmed with wedding stuff or shop bits. The word I’ve heard a lot when people talk about this is balance, so I suppose I was working out what this looked like and meant for me and, I guess this balance will look different for every single person. Whilst I was doing a course in creative writing, my poetry tutor advised us to ‘build a firewall’ around our time to write and I’ve felt like maybe that that has been something I’ve needed to experiment with once again with my drawing practise.
My relationship with drawing has always been a deeply personal one and that feeling of being totally absorbed in a drawing or painting is something that I can remember as far back as primary school. I remember really trying to ‘capture’ people when I drew them and making incredibly honest drawings that included all of the features that made them really interesting. Since then, I have loved the idea of documenting things and I kept a diary which I drew in throughout my teenage years. As an adult I fell in love with sketchbooks and using them as a way to explore and document how I was feeling but also as a way to experiment with different materials. When I first discovered that there were other people who also liked to draw and share their drawings on online, I felt as if I had found what I was meant to be doing. This felt like a big feeling as I had never formally trained in art and had immersed myself in my teaching career and research masters. When I first started, I drew from photos and would spend hours drawing or painting into the night after work, craving time spent with my art supplies and an audiobook.
Over the past three or four years, I have tried to push my practise further through drawing from observation and on location. This is something I first found out about through Emma Carlisle’s incredible Patreon Community and last year had to do as part of my first MA module: Observation and Experiment. Not every location drawing goes right, in fact, for me - most drawings I make on location are ones that don’t quite turn out the way I want them too and I learn something. The point of drawing though, for me, it’s the total absorption and meditative nature of it. There really is something so visceral about drawing in the way that you seem to suck up all the sounds and smells and feelings that were around and happening at the same time. Even when I look at a drawing that I made at my desk, I remember the audiobook I was listening too, the music that was playing, or the people I was talking to.
This is my friend Frances Ives and I drawing and enjoying Lemonatas together in Bristol in July.
That’s why I’ve been really excited to turn my observational drawings into a new series of prints and zines as they feel so very special to me. My new limited edition prints will be online in a few days, and I feel excited and nervous and all of those sorts of feelings... I selected three of my location drawings from my sketchbook that I took with me on holiday to Cornwall this past June and they feel really special because It feels like I’m sharing a part of my sketchbook with you. Honestly, when I look at these drawings I remember exactly how it felt to be sat there drawing, waiting for fish and chips, watching the seagulls soar past or listening to the sailing boat masts clink together. My prints will be available in A3, A2 and A1 sizes and can be shipped all over the world, and I’ll be letting my newsletter subscribers know when the prints are online first.
In other drawing related news, my MA in Children’s Book Illustration at Cambridge School of Art started up again last week and this semester we are thinking all about the audience in ‘Illustrator and Audience: The Paradox’ module. So far, I feel so incredibly excited (and nervous) to begin and to be sharing the experience with an amazing bunch of supportive course mates. I’ll update you here when I find my feet a little bit, but for now just know that I’m spending a lot of time looking back through my summer sketchbooks and trying to put all of the pieces of the puzzle together.
It also feels like it wouldn’t be right to let you know what I’ve been up to without doing a bit of life update, because on the 16th of this month I married my favourite person and we had the most perfect day celebrating with our loved ones. We got married in the Guildhall in Bath and then walked to the Royal Crecsent Hotel where we had a beautiful afternoon tea and heard our families say lovely things in their speeches. In the evening we all went to Corkage, which is a beautiful small plates and wine restaurant just off Queens Square (totally recommend if you’re looking for a special place to have dinner in Bath). We think we might go for a wintery stay in Cornwall for our honeymoon - any recommendations are very warmly welcomed. We both have visions of drinking wine and watching the storms roll in.
If you’re still reading, thank you - your support means everything. See you at the end of October - I’m ready for wooly socks, earlier evenings and cups of tea with the fire on. In fact, as I’m writing this, the rain has just started to pour, the light has almost faded and I can hear the wind in the trees at the top of the garden. Autumn, I am sooooo (!) ready.
Lucy x