The Joy of Sketching

I am an artist by profession, which means that I get to spend my time drawing and painting for exhibitions, writing articles for magazines, creating tutorial books and DVDs, and travelling around the country teaching at workshops and demonstrations.

My job is, without question, a full-time commitment, so when I get time, I like to relax. By far my favourite way of relaxing is on the sofa of an evening, with a sketchbook and pencil, doodling or sketching. Most of the time this takes the form of visualising ideas that find their way into my head from various sources.

Undoubtedly, my main source of inspiration is a small lake and wooded area close to my home, which I call Bunny Wood. This is where I regularly walk my dogs. Despite being a relatively small area, there are so many things to see. Here I can observe the continually changing face of nature throughout the year; wildflowers come and go, along with mushrooms and toadstools of all varieties. There is wildlife in abundance: rabbits, squirrels, birds, waterfowl, frogs, toads, butterflies and moths. All manner of creatures make themselves known when you take the time to look.

If I see an interesting tree stump, roots or bark texture, perhaps a cluster of fungi, I begin to imagine what other unseen woodland creatures might there be, hiding away from prying human eyes. In my mind I have visions of fairies, trolls and trees with faces, all of which begin to tell me their stories.

These ‘stories’ are temporarily put aside while I get on with my usual work and then resurface in the evening as I relax on the sofa with my sketchbook.

One of my other forms of relaxation is reading. I have a particular fondness for supernatural and fairy stories. I love to rescue old classic children’s books from charity shops and often

re-read the stories I loved as a child, visualising the characters and, of course, re-imagining these characters in my sketchbooks.

Sometimes the inspiration for my ‘sofa sketches’ comes from listening to music, as certain melodies and some song lyrics can also suggest images for sketching.

Finally, I must acknowledge the influence that our own animals; dogs, cats and wild rescues have on my sketches, their individual personalities and actions are a great source of inspiration for me, and occasionally they have been known to star in their own versions of my favourite movies!

Some of my ‘sofa sketches’ may find their way to becoming more complete illustrations, perhaps in ink and colour, but mostly I like to keep them as they are, fresh, relatively quick artworks in their own right; something to look back on as a memory of a certain time and place.

Now I’m sharing these memories and inspirations with you, and hopefully they will inspire

you to take up ‘sofa sketching’ yourself.