I have had times when I looked at sketchbooks by other artists and was consumed with a combination of desire to produce such books and a despair at my own inabilities. Recently I realised that when I get that combination of emotions I am inevitabley looking at a book produced by someone with a fine arts background. Their pages are covered with inks and bleaches, paints and gels.  The pages are waxed or embellished with clever inserts and cut outs. They  must spend hours that I do not have, endlessly drawing pears from different angles using a variety of different techniques. It always seems to me that I am lacking in a key product. That, or, I have the key product and have no clue how to use it. I am willing to learn and will pass on anything I do manage to learn via this new journal, but at present I cannot do pages like that.  

And yet, I do keep a 'sketchbook' and get a lot of benefit out of it. I use inverted commas there because I think the name 'sketchbook' itself can be off putting. It invokes Henry Moore's perfectly rendered sheep drawings and implies you need charcoal sticks. I can't be doing with charcoal sticks - they get all over everything and never in the way they are supposed to. Most of the drawings in my sketchbooks are done with the plastic mechanical pencils you get at the side of your bed in hotels.  I still use the name as a generic term, though, as it is a commonly recognisable one.

I have two catgories for books. One I call my 'quilting journals' (in itself now an outdated habit since I     branched out into embroidery) and the other my 'design books'. Come on - I'll give you a peek!

Quilting journals

I use notebooks with blank pages intended for writing in. They operate as a kind of combination external hard drive and dream catcher.  They contain facts, inspiration and half baked ideas which one day may amount to something. For example

 - scrapbook pages for colours that inspire

- leaflets from other artists

- ideas around themes. (This one was for my Dandelion Twelve by Twelve Quilt.)

- records of what I have been doing

- fabric calculations for works in progress

- plans and general journalling.

Basically, these books are receptacles for snippets of information and threads of thoughts which, if left to float freely around my brain, would cause it to explode. They form both a diary to look back on an a resource library for the future. Sometimes I don''t have them with me at the key moment and so I scribble on any old piece of paper around and stick the gem in later.

Design books

My use of these books has definitely been influenced by taking City and Guilds Courses in which you are required to keep a record of a transition from design source through samples to finished project. accordingly they are more focused and either topic orientated ( see my African Masks book in the sketchbook gallery) or project orientated.

For these I favour Spiral bound A4 or increasingly A3 Pink Pig books which contain cartridge paper which will take light wet media if you don't mind the occasional slight wrinkling when you are heavy handed with the water. These are the ones I am open to developing as I learn from other textile artists how they work and how they use art materials for design purposes.

 However, I had a revelation recently - the function of these books is to inspire designs which I will make and so both the books and the finished work should reflect my personality. I think first via words and then via visuals so, although I love to see how embroiderer Jan Beaney starts with page after page of beautifully coloured paintings, I am happy to allow myself to start with a more academic research project and black line diagrams with maybe a bit of water colour added. That fits with how my brain works and so is more beneficial than attempting to copy someone else's style.

It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that there is a right way to do a sketchbook or journal. In fact sketchbooks will differ between artists and one individuals books will vary from time to time as they learn new techniques and follow new themes. Knowing that did not make me any less delighted to discover, in the course of some research on the amazing sculptor El Anatsui to see that his sketchbooks are not that dissimilar from mine. (Or maybe that should be the other way around).

   Having decided firmly to follow my own style and my own needs with sketchbooks I am still fascinated with the work of others and still determined to expand my skills and apply then to my own style.  Which is why I have dedicated a whole section of this site to sketchbooks. I hope to encourage you do expand your use of your own and to pass on anything of use I glean from other sources. If you would like to share you books with me for possible inclusion in a 'reader gallery' do email me - I'd love to see them and I am sure others would to. But please, if they are likely to induce despair and feelings of inadequacy in me on first viewing - send chocolate too would you?