Sketchbook
“When the seventy-six-year-old J.M. W. Turner died in December 1851 only a fraction of his life’s work had been seen by his contemporaries. He had exhibited watercolours and oil painting almost every year since 1790, as well as generating hundreds of images in the form of engraving. But there was much more. Piled up in boxes in his studio, and running along several shelves above the stacks of unsold or unfinished canvases, were around three hundred sketchbooks chating his life and his travels during the previous sixty-two year. The contents of these books amounted to thousands of pages of sketches, generally in pencil, but occasionally worked with bursts of extravagant colour, especially the latest ones. Almost no one had been permitted to look inside these volumes and that was how Turner liked it”
(Warrel, 2018, p.7)
There is a sense of mystery, of privacy attached to the sketchbook and its connection to its owner. It allows the artist to interpret the world surrounding him while thinking, writing or drawing. It contains the most raw gestures, the secret phrases, the forbidden thoughts. To be able to enter into such an intimate realm is like having the possibility of getting close to “your fingerprint, your personality not only the way that you see the world, but what you choose to.” (Hillkurtz, 2019, p.6)
A sketchbook can depict Henry Moore’s fascination with sheeps, Turner’s depiction of the british weather through his gestural watercolours, Pierre Bonnard’s illustrations of earlier travels by motorcar with his friend Octave Milbeau or Jocelyn Herbert’s most intimate relationships with her family and her work. The sketchbook is opened up to all these possibilities and it can become one important historical document that translates all the intricacies of the specificities of a certain chronological time or event.
Using this element became the central point of my work. My close connection to drawing and my necessity to depict my surroundings while being close to my subjects were the main reasons for that. By looking back to all the sketchbooks I completed, it is safe to say that it became a practice which had the power to document the peculiar routines of having to deal with lockdowns, masks, and empty spaces since it translated my life during the covid pandemic.
The sketchbook allowed me to gather the raw material I used in my paintings, drawings among other artworks I produced. It was also the visual input of my thoughts, doubts, interests and gestures.
References
Artists and authors
William Turner
Pierre Bonnard
David Hockney
Paul Cezanne
Van Gogh
Jocelyn Herbert
Henry Moore
Le Corbusier
Lucian Freud
Books, exhibitions and others
Howgate, S.; Gayford, M (2016) Lucian Freud's Sketchbooks. London: National Portrait Gallery
Mirbeau, O. (1989) Bonnard sketches of a Journey. London: Philip Wilson Publishers
Hillkurtz, A. (2019) The Art of Sketchbook. London: Gingko Press
Warrel, I. (2018) Turner’s Sketchbooks. London: Tate Publishing
Berger, J. (2015) Bento’s Sketchbook. London: Verso Books
Brillhart, J. (2016) Voyage le Corbusier Drawing on the Road. London: W. W. Norton & Company; Illustrated edition
Welsh-Ovcharov, B (2016) Vincent Van Gogh The lost Arles Sketchbook. London: Abrams
Howgate, S. (2020) David Hockney drawing from life. London: National Portrait Gallery
Lowe, S (2006) The Diary of Frida Kahlo an intimate self portrait. London: Abrams
Lloyd, C (2015) Paul Cézanne Drawings and Watercolours. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd
Knott, R. (2014) The Sketchbook War: Saving the Nation's Artists in World War II. London: The History Press
Farthing, S; Eyre, R. (2011) The sketchbooks of Jocelyn Herbert. London: Royal academy of Arts
Walking
“Walking (whether on land or on the seabed) involves extending muscles followed by flexing muscles in alternating sequences, a rhythmic pattern controlled by nerve cells of the spinal cord.” (O’Mara, 2019, p.33)
The act of walking can be described as simply as the above statement. Despite that, the truth is that much has been written about it, many layers of meaning and symbolism have been explored and added regarding this human activity.
“Why do we walk? Where do we walk from and what is our destination? We all have our answers.” (Kagge, 2019, p.9)
Walking has been regarder as a meaningful activity along History. In ancient Greece, “the school of peripatetic philosophy (...) was famous for conducting its teaching largely on foot”. (O’Mara (2019) p. 145) Henry David Thoreau said that “The moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow”. (O’Mara (2019) p. 145) Bertrand Russel “was an astonishing active walker, and his walking life is dotted through his autobiography”. (O’Mara, 2019, p. 45) Kiekergaard’s day “was dominated by two pursuits: writing and walking.” (Currey, M., 2013, p.19)
“When travelling, I only really feel at home in a new place once I've had the chance to see it on foot. If I’m in a city I go up and down the streets. i’m letting my feet make maps.” (Kagge, 2019, p.40)
Regarding the importance of walking in my practice, I completely relate to these above words by the Norwegian explorer Erling Kagge. While walking, I am discovering and mapping my surroundings while also gathering the raw material for my work, either in parks, the streets or the underground. Walking has this particularity of making me feel closer and understand where I am, particularly if that place is completely new for me.
Among other authors, Rebeca Solnit and both her books Wanderlust and A field guide to getting lost also revealed to be important sources of information and knowledge regarding the act of walking. She explored the multiple theories and authors who talked about this activity whilse also commenting based on her own experiences.
Artists and authors
Rebecca Solnit
Erling Kagge
Charles Baudelaire
Walter Benjamin
Charles Dickens
Books, exhibitions and others
Coverley, M. (2006) Psycogeography. Herts: Oldcastel books
Mason, M. (2011) Walk the Lines. London: Arrow Books
Solnit, R. (2001) Wanderlust a History of Waking. London: Granta Books
Solnit, R. (2007) A Field Guide to Getting Lost. New York: Canongate Books
Currey, M. (2013) Daily Rituals. London: Picador
O’Mara, S. (2019) In praise of walking. London: Vintage
Kagge, E. (2019) Walking one step at a time. London: Penguin Random House
Gooley, T. (2014) The Walker’s Guide to Outdoor Clues & Signs. London: TristanGooley
Jackson, L. (2012) Walking Dickens’ London. London: Shire Publications
Le flaneur
“The walls are the desk against which he presses his notebooks; news-stands are his libraries and the terraces of cafés are the balconies from which he looks down on his household after his work I done”. (Benjamin, 1969, p.37)
A city explorer, a symbol of modernism and of the city of Paris. The figure of the flaneur, although difficult to describe, is still today associated to the city stroller, of walking while embracing the urbanized and modern world.
“ (...) Charles Baudelaire’s flaneur- a casual wanderer, an observer and reporter of nineteenth-century Paris.” (O’Mara, 2019, p. 99)
The concept of the flaneur was brought to the academy light by Walter Benjamin. Since then, it has been studied fervorously which resulted in the publication of many books and other academic essays which consequently led to many and divergent interpretations of what truly meant to be a flaneur
Regarding my artistic practice, however, I retained this idea of walking in the streets and blending between the crowds as the most important aspect in waht my practice concerns.
“And so, walking or quickening his pace, he goes his way, forever in search. In search of what? We may rest assured that this man, such as I have described him, this solitary mortal endowed with an active imagination, always roaming the great desert of men, has a nobler aim than that of the pure idler, a more general aim, other than the fleeting pleasure of circumstance. He is looking for that indefinable something we may be allowed to call “modernity”, for want of a better term to express the idea in question. The aim for him is to extract from fashion the poetry that resides in this historical envelope, to distil the eternal from the transitory.” (Baudelaire, 1972, p.16)
Artists and authors
Charles Baudelaire
Walter Benjamin
Claude Monet
Pierre Bonnard
Van Gogh
Books, exhibitions and others
Obrist, H (2015) Lives of the Artists, Lives of the Architects. London: Penguin Random House UK
Le Bon, G. (2008) The Crowd a Study of the Popular Mind. Radford: Wilder Publications
Solnit, R. (2001) Wanderlust a History of Waking. London: Granta Books
Baudelaire, C. (1972) The Painter of Modern Life. London: Penguin Classics
Crowds
“A common aspect of walking in the city can be frustration, or irritation. There are people walking faster than you; peope walking slower than you; people walking at you; people walking across you.” (O’Mara, 2019, p. 114)
Even with the covid restrictions, and particularly in the months of spring and summer, it was possible to see how London is a crowded city. By sketching the underground constantly I was gathering all the unknown figures who became these sketchbook crowds and that also became part of my painting. The idea of depicting a figure in a space ended up being of particular importance in my practice. Crowds are, symbolically, a space in their own right.
In the book The Crowd a Study of the Popular Mind the author Gustave Le Bon examines the different kinds of crowds and its distinctive characteristics. In terms of research, this was an important topic in order for me to understand social and behavioral aspects of how we deal with each other, particularly in such a specific time as we live with a pandemic. Masks and social distancing, do they form a new type of crowd? Or do they completely erase that concept?
“The clattering dims, the tunnel is gone. I look around me. But the faces of those beside me hardly change as the station gives way into the amber light of the afternoon.” (Judah, 2016, p.108)
Many artist depicted crowds in different situations, like the old masters with large paintings of religious and royal motifs, like Rembrandt or Rubens, but also the modernist painters, like Renoir or Manet, or even contemporary examples, like the german artist Thomas Eggerer.
Artists and authors
Charles Baudelaire
Walter Benjamin
Gustave Le Bon
Peter Paul Rubens
Thomas Eggerer
Books, exhibitions and others
Le Bon, G. (2008) The Crowd a Study of the Popular Mind. Radford: Wilder Publications
Solnit, R. (2001) Wanderlust a History of Waking. London: Granta Books
Baudelaire, C. (1972) The Painter of Modern Life. London: Penguin Classics
Glaeser, E. (2012) Triumph of the City. London: Penguin Books
Judah, B. (2016) This is London. London: Picador
Greene, J. (2014) Moral Tribes. London: Penguin Books
Perspective and Space
“Florensky argued against the notion that there is only a single, correct variety of perspectives:the “Renaissance” or “linear” type, first demonstrated by Filipp Brunelleschi in the early fifteenth century, with a single vanishing point. Instead, he insisted that the way of depicting space in medieval Russian icons, such as those by Andrei Rublev, was just as alid. These pictures did not have one fixed vanishing point; they were “polycentred”. By this, Florensky meant that “the composition is constructed as if the eye were looking at different parts of it, while changing its position”. (Gayford, 2021, p.10)
Through my work and research I’ve been exploring distortions of space, perspective and composition and how to integrate them in my painting. Partially the reason for this interest comes from my sketchbook usage, which meant, looking at things directly in the place, instead of using photographs.
“What photograph reproduced to infinity has occurred only once: the Photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially. In the Photograph, the event is never transcended for the sake of something else: the Photograph always leads the corpus I need back to the body I see; it is the absolute Particular” (Barthes, 1980, p.4)
By repeatedly sketching the same places, being those either the underground, parks, or the london streets, I was always finding new and interesting things. I looked into the works of artists such as David Hockney, a “space addict” as he calls himself, but also Anthony Green and his distorted depictions of his surroundings, as well as Stanley Spencer, Archibald Motley, Jacob Lawrence and Francys Alÿs. All these artists had very unique ways to work the space and build unique compositions.
Artists and authors
David Hockney
Francys Alys
Jacob Lawrence
Almada Negreiros
Archibald Motley
Anthony Green
Stanley Spencer
Books, exhibitions and others
Barthes, R. (1980) Camera Lucida. London: Vintage
Gayford, M. (2019) Moderns & Mavericks. London: Thame & Hudson
Gayford, M. ; Hockney, D. (2016) A History of Pictures. London: Thames & Hudson
Gayford, M. ; Hockney, D. (2021) Spring Cannot be Canceled. London: Thames & Hudson
Rothenstein, E. (1962) Stanley Spencer. London: Beaverbrooks Newspapers Limited
Powell, R. (2014) Archibald Motley Jazz Age Modernist. Durham: Duke University Press
Lawrence, J. (1974) Jacob Lawrence. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art
The city of London
“The strength that comes from human collaboration is the central truth behind civilization's success and the primary reason why cities exist. To understand our cities and what to do about them, we must hold on to those truths and dispatch harmful myths. (...) Above all, we must free ourselves from our tendency to see cities as their buildings, and remember that the real city is made of flesh, not concrete.” (Glaeser, 2012, p.15)
London became a constant presence in my work during my MA course. However, trying to decipher and understand a city so complex, constantly changing and evolving is not an easy task.
“This is london: the conquest of one postcode by another. These are slum streets for which they have dreams. There will be coffee shops where there is cash and caries. There will be cocktails where there are yams. There will be bicycles outside organic delicatessens.” (Judah, 2016, p.348)
Throughout the years many artists and authors tried to portrait this city, understanding their many layers. I looked into artists who did precisely that such as Leon Kossof, Frank Auerbach, Gilbert and Gorge, among others, in order for me to understand how they interpreted the feeling of being in this particular place. But also writers such as Mark Mason, Ben Judah or Ian Sinclair, man of them who still struggle to decipher London’s enigma.
“I had waked here - and I would soon walk on, I’m not sure where - because my sense was that London , my home for fifty years, was being centrifugally challenged to the point of obliteration; of being unable to say just where, and why, it began and ended.” (Ian Sinclair, 2017, p.6)
By walking I tried to fuse myself with the city and to incorporate that feeling into my work. A difficult, most likely impossible task, but one that London freely invites us to try.
Artists and authors
Ian Sinclair
Ben Judah
Charles Dickens
Frank Auerbach
Leon Kossof
Mark Mason
Books, exhibitions and others
Martin, A (2012) Underground Overground. London: Profile Books LTD
Solnit, R. (2001) Wanderlust a History of Waking. London: Granta Books
Coverley, M. (2006) Psycogeography. Herts: Oldcastel books
Glaeser, E. (2012) Triumph of the City. London: Penguin Books
Judah, B. (2016) This is London. London: Picador
Greene, J. (2014) Moral Tribes. London: Penguin Books
Taylor, C. (2011) Londoners. London: Granta Publications
Sinclair, I. (2017) The Last London. London: Oneworld Publications
Mason, M. (2011) Walk the Lines. London: Arrow Books
Underground
“Everyone is either phone starring or unfocused, elsewhere. Because there is something intensely privat about the Tube. Everyone surrounded, but alone, cramped, fixed in spot, but loose, in thought, between things: these are the faces of people worrying and dreaming” (Judah, 2016, p.108)
This description of the London Underground's atmosphere by the author Ben Judah is incredibly accurate and similar to the one I kept having throughout my daily travels between home and college. It became an indispensable ritual to sketch the underground's unknown passengers, probably the most important "raw material" I gathered. Besides that, In my late paintings, I was also trying to depict that same atmosphere that Ben Judah so well described. So in the end, the underground was not only the main source of my sketches, it became something more than that.
“(...) was never properly planned but just sort of sprawled, and because it was built over the curse of 140 years , it is far more revealing of the history and character of the city it serves than any of the above systems.” (Martin, 2012, p.4)
The underground is a fundamental part of the city of London. Its colours and map are unique. Among other elements, the London underground is also part of the city's soul.
Artists and authors
Ian Sinclair
Ben Judah
Mark Mason
Books, exhibitions and others
Martin, A (2012) Underground Overground. London: Profile Books LTD
Coverley, M. (2006) Psycogeography. Herts: Oldcastel books
Glaeser, E. (2012) Triumph of the City. London: Penguin Books
Judah, B. (2016) This is London. London: Picador
Greene, J. (2014) Moral Tribes. London: Penguin Books
Taylor, C. (2011) Londoners. London: Granta Publications
Sinclair, I. (2017) The Last London. London: Oneworld Publications
Mason, M. (2011) Walk the Lines. London: Arrow Books
parks
“In truth taking time to note the character of the less prominent landmarks is a habit that takes effort to cultivate. It is only common in three groups of people I have walked with: artists, experienced soldiers and indiginous peoples.” (Gooley, 2014, p.11)
Just like we associate the underground to the city, it’s impossible to talk about London without mentioning its parks. Hyde park, Hampstead Heath, Battersea park among others. It is a way to hide momentary form the crowds, the movement, the modernized fast paced way of living.
“With home today so full of technology, Worpole believes that in the modern age parks may have to “function much like churches once did”, as places for solitude and sanctuary”. (Elborough, 2016, p. 319)
I wanted, through my park depictions, to illustrate the existence of that closeness to nature in the middle of the city. My research led me to the landscape, the impressionists and their way of working “en plein air”.
According to David Hockenys, when painting landscape the artist is “depicting the processes of life. That's what landscapes really are” (Hockney, 2021, p.154)
I became particularly drawn to elements like trees and lakes.
Later, in my park series I also started to incorporate ideas of emptiness and mapping, ideas that developed as long as I was sketching and painting.
Artists and authors
William Turner
David Hockney
Ian Sinclair
Ben Judah
Mark Mason
Travis Elborough
Robert Mcfarlane
Tristan Gooley
Books, exhibitions and others
Coverley, M. (2006) Psycogeography. Herts: Oldcastel books
Glaeser, E. (2012) Triumph of the City. London: Penguin Books
Judah, B. (2016) This is London. London: Picador
Taylor, C. (2011) Londoners. London: Granta Publications
Sinclair, I. (2017) The Last London. London: Oneworld Publications
Elborough, T. (2017) A walk in the Park. London: Vintage
Gooley, T. (2016) A Walker’s Guide to Outdoor Clues & Signs. London: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
Mcfarlane, R. (2012) The Old Ways. London: Penguin Books
maps
“In other words, maps hold a clue to what makes us human. Certainly, they relate and realign our history. They reflect our best and worst attributes - discovery and curiosity, conflict and destruction - and they chart our transitions of power. Even as individuals, we seem to have a need to plot a path and track our progress, to imagine possibilities of exploration and escape. The language of maps is integral to our lives, too. we have achieved something if we have put ourselves (or our town) on the map. The organized among us have things neatly mapped out. We need compass points or we lose our bearings. We orient ourselves (for on old maps east was on the map). We give someone a degree of latitude to roam.” (Garfield, 2013, p.18)
While walking and sketching the city of London I was also mapping my surroundings. This idea became important both in my artistic practice but also to my research.
There are many different ways to use maps as the source material for creative work. The book Mapping it out: an alternative atlas of contemporary cartographies, edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist is proof of that . Maps can sometimes be “an abstraction of the physical world - a symbolic depiction of a space or idea” (Ulbrich, 2014, p.11) or “(...) about directions and obstacles. The circulation of the blood. The blood of cities.” (Ulbrich, 2014, p.182) while also being “an internal journey that humans make into “oneself” (Ulbrich, 2014, p.201)
As I was working, I understood I wanted to incorporate sensations attached to ideas of strolling, of geographical routines, not as a single event but instead as an organic accumulation of these daily movimentations. This ideas can be included into concepts such as psychogeography, an interesting term that was also integrated in my research.
“Once you have built up a good picture of the shape of the land and its character, it is time to search for the lines that humans have drawn in the landscape in the form of roads, railway lines and paths.” (Gooley, 2014, p.23)
Artists and authors
Hans Ulrich Obrist
Ian Sinclair
Ben Judah
Mark Mason
Travis Elborough
Robert Mcfarlane
Tristan Gooley
Alighiero Boetti
Books, exhibitions and others
Coverley, M. (2006) Psycogeography. Herts: Oldcastel books
Glaeser, E. (2012) Triumph of the City. London: Penguin Books
Judah, B. (2016) This is London. London: Picador
Taylor, C. (2011) Londoners. London: Granta Publications
Sinclair, I. (2017) The Last London. London: Oneworld Publications
Elborough, T. (2017) A walk in the Park. London: Vintage
Gooley, T. (2016) A Walker’s Guide to Outdoor Clues & Signs. London: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
Mcfarlane, R. (2012) The Old Ways. London: Penguin Books
Garfield, S. (2013) On the Map. London: Profile Books Ltd
Obrist, H. (2014) Mapping it Out: an Alternative Atlas of Contemporary Cartographies. London: Thames & Hudson
Line and gesture
“An art historian could put together a chronology of his career just in terms of the multiplicity of diverse lines that he has produced. (...) There were the ultra-thin marks made by a kind of pen called a Rapidograph, with which he created drawings modelled with line alone - no shadows. Then, quite didffereds, the works in colored crayon and pencil (...) the chunkier reed-pen strokes of portraits from the end of the decade(...) the later ones drawn with a brush, including watercolours from 2003 (...)” (Gayford, 2021, p.83)
Without any doubt, the line ended up being one of the most important elements of my work during all the duration of my MA, from the beginning, with my first sketches, until my final paintings on canvas. The gesture through the line became the essence of my practice.
Different cultures have different ways to undestand the line in painting and drawing. While doing my research I understood that both Chinese and Japanese painting traditions have a different relationship to the line meaning in comparison to the occidental culture. As an example, according to the Chinese artist Chang Dai-chen’s philosophy, the gestural painting, the line is linked to an idea of purity in the spirit of the painter defending that his success invariably "(...) depends on his ability to make “the spirit dwell in the purity when it’s done." (Zhang, 2019, p.10).
I also came across the Japanese printmaking tradition of using the black line just like the artist Koizumi Kishio did with his Tokyo printmaking series of works developed between 1928 and 1940.
While reading the book Principles of Chinese painting, by George Rowley, I also came across this idea of the mood, the feelings and sensations being connected to how the line can be used to depict nature.
“In the painting of themes from nature, mood was the essence of the subject. Bamboo was painted in every kind of mood, quiescent or windblown, in sunshine or in rain, with dew, frost or snow upon it, in the morning and in the evening, each effect so subtly rendered that it sometimes scapes us.” (Rowley, 1970, p.18)
There is also this interesting connection between the impressionists’ painting en plein air and the tradition of being close to nature in the Chinese painting philosophy. Both are connected to the capture of the gesture in the moment, and I can relate both practices to my own.
“Derived directly from the artist’s experience of nature and were expressed in the rhythmic language of painting” (Rowley, 1970, p.19)
Finally, the idea of using the line in my practice is also associated with a simplification of what I was depicting, an attempt to capture only the essential. Chinese art is precisely “an art of extreme elimination, simplification and suggestion.” (Rowley, 1970, p.36)
Artists and authors
David Hockney
George Rowley
Hokusai
Koizumi Kishio
Chang Dai-chien
Books, exhibitions and others
Gayford, M. ; Hockney, D. (2016) A History of Pictures. London: Thames & Hudson
Gayford, M. ; Hockney, D. (2021) Spring Cannot be Canceled. London: Thames & Hudson
Rowley, G. (1970) Principles of Chinese Painting. Princeton: Princeton University Press
Leff, C. (2003) Tokyo: The Imperial Capital. Miami: The Wolfsonian-Florida International University
Johnson, M.; Zhang, J (2019) Chang Dai-chien Painting from Heart to Hand. San Francisco: Asian Art Museum
chinese scroll painting
“A scroll painting must be experienced in time like music or literature. Our attention is carried along, laterally from right to left, being restricted at any one moment to a short passage which can be conveniently pursued” (Rowley, 1970, p.61)
Among other interesting aspects of the Chinese scroll painting tradition, the way it works with space, adding unique reading to ideas of perspective and composition, was the main reason I used it as an important element both to my technical and also conceptual research. I tend also to associate that idea with the sketchbook, in the sense that both objects share an incorporated narrative of cumulative moments gathered through time.
The scroll painting never has a “ fixed vanishing point”. (Hockney, 2021, p.96). Instead, it invites the viewer to move, to be an active seeker of little details instead of focusing on one single point of interest, just like we do in real life when we are walking. We don't fix a single point, our eyesight moves, our attention is conditioned by what attracts us between different moments.
Artists and authors
David Hockney
George Rowley
Chang Dai-chien
Books, exhibitions and others
Gayford, M. ; Hockney, D. (2016) A History of Pictures. London: Thames & Hudson
Gayford, M. ; Hockney, D. (2021) Spring Cannot be Canceled. London: Thames & Hudson
Rowley, G. (1970) Principles of Chinese Painting. Princeton: Princeton University Press
Johnson, M.; Zhang, J (2019) Chang Dai-chien Painting from Heart to Hand. San Francisco: Asian Art Museum
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