A productive morning of sketching in The Rocks

February 9, 2021 | Leave your thoughts


Now that Lesson 4 of Sketchbook Design has gone live, I want to share all sketches from my little self- filming outing a few weeks ago. I shared some progress photos previously, but here are the finished pages.


I had a number of insights into my process during this sketching session. For many years I’ve been very aware of how much I think about the design of previous pages before deciding on the position of the first sketch of a new spread. I normally flip through my book to get a feel for what I’ve done and this will normally give me a clue as to where to start my sketch.

But I never realised before how my usual ‘mid-sketch pause’ to work out how to finish this sketch also involves a lot of thought about the layout of the page. I rarely have a clear idea of the end result of a sketch and I also don’t plan my layouts beforehand.This is what I call designing on the fly and it’s something that I explained in detail inside my Watercolour On Location course (for the sketches) and now inside my Sketchbook Design course (for the page layout). It’s been a real eye-opener to realise how integrated my sketchbook layout thoughts are with my thoughts about the composition of my sketches.


The other interesting thing about documenting my design process during a sketching outing was that I was more intentional about tying together a sequence of pages.


This was a fun outing – filming myself with two cameras was a challenge – and I’m pleased with the end results. It was a great way to finish off the pre-recorded portion of the course.


Just a few livestreams left of the current Group Run-through – hmm, nothing ‘just’ about it! The livestream series for this Group Run-through is almost like another course within the course – 8 hours of jam-packed instruction and feedback. There is a lot of prep that goes into these livestreams – including looking through all the incredible work uploaded to the classroom galleries, choosing a pile of work to review and then trying to summarise the main themes (including new ideas and thoughts!)

Oh! I’m loving going through Sketchbook Design with this group! So much inspiration and wonderful creative energy within the classroom.

So I better get back to it – and finishing reviewing Lesson 3 work before today’s livestream.


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