Home is a river
The ice floes are long gone and, with the arrival of sunshine, life on the river is once again to be envied rather than pitied…..
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April was an intense month in the studio, with many projects on the go, but the Beowulf festival at the beginning of May was a great success, culminating in a spectacular music and visual display projected onto the tide mill. Thanks to ‘Clare the Mayor’ and the visual/musical genius of Jan Pulsford for such an imaginative event.
![](https://claudiamyatt.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/beowulf-projection.jpg)
![](https://claudiamyatt.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/bw-brooch-4-low-res.jpg)
When the festival was over I was tired and fed up with all things artistic; time for a break. Luckily in early May I had a trip to Eriskay planned, arranged by some good friends who had invited me to join them. The Hebrides have been on my list of places I want to go for so long that I couldn’t believe I was actually on my way. After feeling like I never wanted to pick up a pencil again, I started sketching on the ferry and found it difficult to stop.
The best thing about sketchbooks is that they reflect life – imperfect, unfinished, sometimes full of colour but sometimes not, different every page, capturing fragments of experience as they flow by. I love the way I can turn to an empty page at the start of a day, with no idea of what will be on it by the end.
A sketchbook is a contrast to producing a finished painting, which has the expectation that it will be a) finished, b) good enough to hang on a wall in public and c) technically accurate and/or artistically interesting. But the odd thing is (and I’ve mentioned this before), when I teach an art group and ask them ‘who keeps a sketchbook?’, very few do. There is some shuffling of feet and avoiding eye contact, murmurings of ‘I know I ought to really’ and someone says ‘I took a sketchbook on holiday but didn’t have time to use it’. Somehow it’s perceived as easier to produce a painting by copying a photograph than doing a few rough scribbles in a sketchbook.
So if you’re trying to paint and keep getting stuck, if your paintings keep coming out looking the same and a bit ‘coloured in’, then throw away the photos (at least for now) and get out the sketchbook. Go for unfinished and imperfect and some magic will happen – not necessarily straight away, but it will happen. Later, when you begin again to create a finished painting, you’ll have the skills to do something new and fresh. Though you may find that keeping a sketchbook is so addictive that you don’t get time!
Home again now, back to being busy in the studio for a while. If you’re trying to draw boats and keep getting stuck, or think they’re too difficult, treat yourself to a ‘Classic Boat’ magazine – my two page article about how to sketch boats is in this month’s edition – let me know if it helps. Most of all, keep going and don’t give up because you can’t get it right first time!
A VERY talented lady!