Making Connections
“I use sketchbooks to write down ideas, sketch characters, develop stories, thumbnail storyboards, make shopping lists, stick cuttings and visual reference in, make colour notes, doodle in and keep my daughter amused on train journeys… so in essence they’re really important for my work and my life!
Each book I’m working on has it’s own specially labelled notebook. My favourite size is A6 with plain paper and as many pages as possible. I find ideas can strike when I’m least expecting it so I try and keep notebooks for the books I’m working portable.
I like to keep the media I use in them as broad as possible. I have a pencil case with a random assortment of pens, biros, pencils, graphite sticks, crayons and at home in the studio I have a little trolley brimming with all manner of drawing implements. I find it freshens my drawings up to keep changing media. I have a type of Victorian dip pen that I’m particularly fond of drawing with. A few years ago I picked up over 50 on ebay, which should keep my going for a few years!
Back at the studio I have a range of larger sketchbooks. I like to collect sketchbooks from different countries. I find different formats and types of paper stock, and I can think about my travels whilst I draw in them.
Whilst studying at Saint Martins I started collating some of the ideas from my sketchbooks and photocopying them into small self-published editions. As an extension of this I’ve recently started to collect ideas into a digital sketchbook, where my analogue sketches get combined with digital tablet drawing and collage. At present it’s about 50 pages long and growing… I’ve no idea how the book will develop, but that’s one of the things I enjoy most about sketchbooks, the way that notes and drawings on a page can start to take on a life of their own, and connections and ideas begin to spring up almost by themselves…”
You can see more of Neal’s sketchbooks work in the Summer issue of Illustration magazine.
Tags: digital, sketchbook