“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 The sketchbook is opened up to all these possibilities and it can become one important historical document that translates all the intricacies of the specificities of a certain chronological time or event.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