Naomi Cotrufo – Mixed-media Embroiderer
Naomi Cotrufo
Storytelling through stitchesSee an activity kindly submitted by Naomi
See Naomi Cotrufo’s Blog
Click to see fullsize.“I am a recent graduate from the University of Huddersfield, graduating with a First BA (Hons) degree in Textiles Crafts, specializing in Embroidery.
My drawing and sketchbook work have become key in my process and practice and this is an aspect I would like to take further. I’m really interested in going into children’s illustration and creating a book of some sort, as i use mixed-media and collage as one of my main methods to get my ideas onto paper.
My embroidery work is quirky and unique using contemporary and traditional methods to produce pieces based on childhood memories and growing up, a theme which is consistent throughout my work – using the past to inspire the present, by storytelling through stitches.
Click to see fullsize
Click to see fullsizeSee an activity kindly submitted by Naomi
See Naomi Cotrufo’s Blog
Jo Blaker – artist
Jo Blaker
See an icebreaker exercise by Jo Blaker.
This book belonged to my grandfather, who used it during the Second World War for keeping records of things like soldiers equipment. Now it is my sketchbook.
For me sketchbooks are a place to draw, paint and write. They are miniature worlds and a private place where I can say, do and draw what I like and how I like. It doesn’t matter how things look – you can always turn the page and forget about the bits you don’t like. This makes a sketchbook exciting to look at – you never know what is coming next.
In my sketchbooks I make drawings from my imagination and observational drawings of people in public places such as cafes, libraries and train stations. It’s interesting to see how these different ways of drawing meet and mix within one book. I’m interested in people so my sketchbooks are full of quick drawings of the faces, clothes and bodies I see. Whilst I make these drawings I try to experiment with lines and pattern because this makes the process more fun.
Sometimes I just blob paint on a page in a colour I really like and then leave it. When I find it again a few weeks later I might draw on it, cut it up to use in a different picture or just leave it and wait for another day to use it.
While I draw stuff pops into my head – like words or phrases, ideas for a project, or ideas for another drawing. I jot these down as I draw and then leave them. They just exist as little ideas written down until a few weeks, a month or years later I find them again and get an idea of a way in which I would like to use them. At this point I usually start to work on them outside of my sketchbook. I’ll copy and cut them up, add them to another image or re-draw them on a larger scale or in a different way. This process is really satisfying and is why I don’t tear pages out of my sketchbooks or throw them away.
Over the years my sketchbooks change as I do. When I look at an old sketchbook I remember all sorts of little things about my life at the time I used it. For me, this unique connection to my own past can only be made in and found in this place.
Copyright Jo Blaker 2009
Yumi Okuda – illustrator
Yumi Okuda
“I use my sketchbooks for ideas, notes, outdoor drawings, drawing from memory, drawings for illustration…. The sketchbooks allow me to experiment with materials and composition. It challenges me to make the images work well from one page to the next. Also it is practical, as I won’t lose the drawings.”
See an activity suggested by Yumi – Drawing and Composition
Isabella Whitworth – textile artist
Isabella Whitworth
“When I was at Art College in the ’60s we had to keep sketchbooks . We
were even taught how to make our own. Every Friday we had to hand in
our sketchbooks so that our graphics tutor could see our work in them.
They were our personal response to the observed world; we worked in
them outside our college hours and they indicated a sense of our
individual direction.One day a fellow student, who had had rather a heavy week of pub
evenings, handed in his empty sketchbook. He said, “I’m sorry, Mr S.,
I haven’t seen anything interesting this week.”When a bomb goes off, people say there is a tangible shift in the air
which signals the coming explosion. We all felt it then. Mr S. was a
Yorkshireman not bereft of a neat turn of phrase. In the mighty verbal
explosion that followed he railed against the mind that cannot find
interest in the world, or doesn’t see because it is too lazy or
uninterested to bother looking. He reminded us that as artists our
duty and privilege was to observe the world, to reflect and respond
and to communicate what we saw. There was no place for us in the
college if we could not find interest in every moment of our waking
lives.It was this lambasting that made me realise how lucky I was to learn
to draw – and to become an artist of sorts. Sketchbooks became a
habit. Through drawing I gained an understanding and insight into the
world which ensured I would never, ever, be bored. I realised that
people who say they are bored are blaming the world for being
uninteresting, when they should really be examining themselves for
their negativity.When I worked in industry and was unable to draw as part of my
everyday work, I drew sleeping passengers on commuter trains, or
British Rail door-handles. I wrote down snatches of conversations or
announcements, glued in tickets and labels and stamps and handwriting
from envelopes. When in the bath I drew the taps; when in a café I
drew cups or spoons or the shapes in my coffee. There is much joy to
be found in the ordinary. Now I am a studio artist again I continue to
use my current sketchbook to record the world around me. Via my old
sketchbooks I have an archive of memories and images to refer to and
to use in new work.
I chose sketchbook pages from a 1996 family trip in a camper van,
travelling from Darwin to Sydney through the red heart of Australia,
and three more recent pages.
When we started on the long road south from Darwin I couldn’t believe
the intensity of the colours after England. Bright lime greens,
eucalyptus greeny-greys, reds, rusty browns and bright orange. Huge,
intense, aching blue skies. Purple shadows, raspberry and blood-
coloured rocks. We had a long way to go and there wasn’t time to stop
to draw. So when I wasn’t driving I learned to sketch the landscape
fast, make colour notes as we went along and paint them up in the
evenings using watercolour. I found that there was such a thing as
“colour memory” and that mine wasn’t bad.
I saw that the proportion of colours was important; those huge blue
expanses of sky balanced the vibrancy of the colours of rocks and
vegetation. The endless miles of roadside with eucalyptus and dirt and
near or distant rocks weren’t at all dreary or unchanging and the more
I studied those colours and shapes, the more I saw how different they
were. It was a life lesson of which my graphics tutor would have
approved.
I collected tourist brochures, realising that the colours of the
landscape were reflected strongly in the designer’s choice of colour.
I made landscape collages with them since all the colours I needed
were there in the photographs.I still do this. Here are two more recent collages of Port Isaac,
Cornwall, from just last year.
Activities for children suggested by Isabella:
Collage as Paint Collect and Collage Landscape and Colour Remembering Colour
Rob Gill – illustrator
Rob Gill
My working method usually consists of buying one good sketchbook and one really cheap one, or if I can’t find a cheep one I’ll just buy a pack of printer paper or scrounge leftovers from the guillotine or the studio. I get really clingy to my good sketchbook so hardly any drawing at all goes on in there, just incase my pen slips or I do a drawing I really don’t link and it just gets messed up. Instead, I use the cheap paper for my sketches and drawings.
My good sketchbook is used as presentation sketchbook. I cut out the drawings from the rough paper and just use sellotape or masking tap to stick them in. I often use flaps to layer up my drawings. This hides the ones I feel are less successful and then my best ones are shown on top.
I rarely throw any of my drawings away as when you look back at things I find my opinion has changed.
I try not to write too much in my sketchbooks, I’m not very good with spelling or grammar so I just let the drawings tell their own story with the occasional note here and there to remind me of my first impressions.
By working like this you end up with really fat sketchbooks, overflowing with drawings and information. I like this, it feel like the sketchbook almost becomes a separate piece of work, a precious object, and because I have stuck things in everywhere each page layout is exactly how I want it and what’s more, I haven’t just thrown away my bad drawings I’ve just hidden them from sight a little.
And as if that isn’t enough one of the most rewarding things about working in this way is that I haven’t wasted my money on a sketchbook, but I have used every available space to its best effect.
See more of Robs work at his blog
Debbie Greenaway: illustrator, printmaker
If you would like your sketchbook to appear here, send us some images of your sketchbook/what’s inside, and a few words about how you use it/how it uses you. Mail to: info@accessart.org.uk
Debbie Greenaway
I am an illustrator and printmaker who lives and works in Manchester. I graduated from University of Central Lancashire in July 2008 where I did an illustration degree. When I handed in all my work for the final assessment, I found it odd to think about taking a break from drawing and just continued to draw in an old sketchbook that I had been hoarding.
So after the big hand-in day, I was really stuck about what to draw as before I was drawing to set university briefs/projects. So now it was time to draw just for me. Well I was stuck. I decided that I should really start improving my people drawing skills as I have always avoided and hated drawing people. In the end I went out and about to do some reportage/observational drawing as I thought it would help but the thought of drawing people still scared me. While I was sat in a cafe deciding what to do, I decided to draw people I saw in the cafe as lions. I used draw lions all the time when I was younger. Ten months on, I can’t stop drawing people I see as lions.
My little square sketchbook goes everywhere with me. So does a mechanical pencil as I don’t have to sharpen it and a packet of felt-tips for instant colouring-in. I try and draw at least a page a day if not two. If I am unable to go outside to do observational drawing I use any opportunity in order to create and draw lions. I sit at home and draw things I see on the telly or in magazines as lions and other random objects for example, slices of bread or muffins from work to fill in spaces in between the spaces in my sketchbook. Sometimes I draw about things I have done or where I would like to go, what I am thinking about or just use my imagination to create other characters. I try not to eavesdrop but over heard snippets of conversation are often scribbled into speech bubbles to give the lions something to talk about.
I am hoping to write a story about some of the lions and characters I have drawn. Some of the lions feed into ideas for my print work (screen-prints and etching) and I am developing some of these ideas in to creating pieces of work for my portfolio.
For your sketchbook approach:
With a sketchbook it is important not to scare yourself with the white pages. You can keep it as messy and as neat and tidy as you like. You are free to draw in it, drawing as you want to draw with what every materials or methods you choose. When I speak to people about drawing they often say they cannot draw but I believe everyone can draw. People feel or are expected to draw and create an amazing masterpiece straight off, all perfect and realistic looking but drawing and enjoying drawing is nothing like this. If you want to draw ‘silly’ or have a particular way of drawing say for example with continuous lines or making collages then you can do this. If your three legged pink with green spots monster has eleven eyes and lives in a snooker table then so be it. there are no rules at all. it is your sketchbook and you can draw what you want as you want to.
Emma Davies
Emma Davies
Read more about Emma’s sketchbook approach
I have various sketch books dedicated to a number of topics. And they are used quite methodically and may take me years to complete. Some are used to research ideas for art works – some I consider as art works themselves. I have a whole cupboard full of sketch books. And I often sketch on any piece of paper that is lying around and then stick it in like a scrapbook. In the past my sketchbooks have been a messy affair… but at the moment I am in a ‘tidy’ period. This probably reflects my ordered approach to my life as a working mum. As a student they were rather tatty covered in paint.
Photo and Sketchbook credit: Emma DaviesSmall hardback sketchbook. Containing recent notes and ideas for a drawing I am working on presently. Drawing called ”1984: Transition from Middle to Big”. The notes and sketches were drawn in biro.
Photo and Sketchbook credit: Emma DaviesSmall Hardback Sketch Book. Self Portrait drawn in Biro.
Further information about work can be found on my blog
Jonathan Ford – sculptor
Jonathan Ford
“All drawings were part of the evolution of Meth V, a creature who now lives at the Jerwood Sculpture Park. Processes involved the collection of boxes & boxes of images from magazines, books and pamphlets. The images were then cut with scissors and drawn onto or transformed into part of Meth V. No scanning or computer involvement was used for these images.”
Click here to see a workshop activity inspired by artist Jonathan Ford.
