...on my soapbox: A Love Affair

If I could take one thing with me to a desert island.. it would without a doubt be my sketchbook.

My sketchbook isn't your average bound book with a wad of white scary looking paper inside.. oh no!

I always found the process of beginning a new blank sketchbook quite frightening actually.. that may indeed sound very silly! However, I hated that awful feeling you get when you sit there, staring at the huge white expanse of cartridge paper.. and then the mental block rears its ugly head!

I tried all sorts of 'creative stimulation' exercises.. all the usual tricks of the trade! I often found one of the most effective to be drawing a simple heart or star line drawing in the corner of the page. Almost as if I was tricking my mind into believing the page wasn't actually blank anymore. This worked for a while.. it got me through my Art A-Levels actually.. but then university was a different kettle of fish, and my mind out-smarted me!

Then suddenly it came to me!

What if I didn't use a sketchbook at all? I could use a completely unrelated media on which to record my ideas.

I started to experiment, using the backs of old cereal boxes, napkins in coffee shops and scraps of graph paper... anything that already had a pattern or image on it. Anything that was already stimulating to look at even before I attacked it with my paintbrush!

In my personal life I am a very organised and disciplined person.. but in the studio i'm a complete nut case! So much so that it became increasingly difficult to keep track of all my scraps of paper.

I've always had a love affair with books.. I am a keen reader and have a vast collection of titles, both old and new. I have many vintage hardbacks from various countries I have visited.. many of them in foreign languages so I am unable to read them.. I literally bought them because they looked interesting

... or even because they smelled amazing (like the oldies often do!)

It seemed a real shame that these treasures were no longer being used.. just sitting on the bookcase alongside modern novels and trashy romances. It was almost insulting. After all they have a rich history and a life story amongst the dog-eared pages that no new glossy title can compete with.

So I decided to breath some life back into them.. and my new sketchbook was born!

'A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett' - My favourite bedtime story!

I firstly white washed the pages so they could be worked upon

Being careful to still keep some of the text visible through the paint

One of my favourite pages!

I have found this new way of working to be both incredibly inspiring.. as often you come across a line of text peeking through a white washed, page that sends sparks flying through the imagination. Here is a classic example of one of those occasions...

As a Yorkshire woman I find this statement to be very true!

This week I have come to the part of the year when I need to start a new personal journal - something I have done every year since I was a teenager. I have decided to follow the same method as I have previously done with my sketchbooks, and have been looking for a suitable vintage book for some time.

I came across this 'Simple Needlecraft' book on a facebook page called Yorkshire Teas.. and snapped it up for a great price.