Looking back over sketchbooks from the last ten or twenty years, I liked some of my bolder, simpler drawings, so I took a break and, using my Lamy Safari with the bold nib, drew the pile of A6 sketchbooks that I was going through.
When I’m struggling to find a particular drawing, I realise that I’d save myself a lot of time if I could get my sketchbooks properly organised; date order would be a good start.
Over the past four years of writing my Wild Yorkshire nature diary articles for the Dalesman magazine, I’ve sorted through most of my larger sketchbooks and stuck a label on the back of each one with a note of the start and finish dates and of the main locations that I visited.
As they don’t figure as much in my Dalesman pieces, my pocket-size sketchbooks, the ones that I use mainly about town, have been neglected, so I’ve been going through them today.
Some include holiday sketches, bringing back memories of Alpine lakes and Mediterranean coasts. I realise that I need to keep up my habit of dating and writing the location of every drawing because it’s amazing how easy it is to forget. I was puzzled by a familiar looking scene (above), so familiar that I hadn’t labelled it, which I couldn’t place until it realised that it was the bus stop that I’d used throughout my childhood and student days.
Another mystery was ‘Hollys mum’s garden.’ Who was Holly I asked Barbara? Then I realised that it was a drawing of holly bushes in my late mum’s front garden.