Staying at home when everyone else is on holiday makes the everyday look a little bit different. The streets are empty, and so are the supermarkets, playgrounds and schoolyards – all deserted. All is peaceful … almost forsaken.
Still I’m here, doing my daily sketches, recording what is.
But I’m not only sketching, peaceful days also leave room for reading. Here is what I’ve learnt from Oliver Sacks this week:
Creativity involves not only years of conscious preparation and training but an unconscious preparation as well. This incubation period is essential to allow the subconscious assimilation and incorporation of one’s influences and sources, to reorganise and synthesise them into something of one’s own.
The essential element in these realms of retaining and appropriating versus assimilating and incorporating is one of depth, of meaning, of active and personal involvement.
sub rosa 
I very much like your idea to simplify the scene. I think I can learn something from your technique and try to imagine how I might apply it to photography. I suspect that might be a challenge!
Still, I would be fun to try.
A wonderful challenge – looking forward to see what you will do! 😉
a very elegant and harmonious work, above all the empty and full spaces create an excellent balance. What kind of paper do you use?
Thank you!
These are sketches done in trav•e•logue – artist journal (200 gms)
The paper might be a bit rough for my Micron pens, but I love the shape of the pages, and the quality of the book.
You can see a review here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yVFPU26nvI
Here is what the manufacturer says: “Hand-bound bookcloth cover has just the right flexibility. Contains 128 pages of heavyweight buff drawing paper with a good tooth. Great for pen & ink, pencil, and markers. Accepts light watercolor washes without buckling and, of course, it’s 100% acid-free.”
many thanks! do you know “Canson 180°” ? is really wonderful, for Micron and pencil is perfect. Good work from Italy! Margot
no – I do not, do you get this paper in sketchbooks?
happy sketching!
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https://www.artsupplies.co.uk/item-canson-art-book-180.htm
Canson 180° is sketchbook, I like it very very much, the paper is smooth but you can use watercolor if not too wet. When I use the watercolor, I put a sheet underneath so as not to let the humidity pass. The pencil and the felt-tip pens flow wonderfully and it is not expensive either. it can be opened at 180 °, hardcover. Happy sketching to you!
Wonderful – have to try it! THANK YOU 😘
“recording what is.” Yes!
an often overlooked but really very meaningful task – wouldn’t you agree?
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Wonderful sketches; you’ve captured simplicity quite nicely. As a word person, I was really struck by the caption in the first sketch: why are some of us drawn to “ugliness?”
I certainly am drawn to the run-down, abandoned, and derelict. Maybe I know there’s a story in there somewhere?
So often your posts address a problem that I am currently wrestling with. The Oliver Sacks quote was really what I needed to hear this morning. I have been thinking about time spent studying and collecting ideas, thoughts, themes. I like that this is not time wasted, but an important part of creating my own works, an incubation period. Thank you for sharing that timely quote.
Thank you, Cheryl!
Just like you, I feel Sacks address core questions in my own personal develpment now that I have entered what the Jungian psycho-analyst James Hollis calls «the Second Half of Life».
Ah, I love Oliver Sacks! He is so readable! Did you read his autobiography – On the Move? Your sketches are equally pleasurable, and I hope you’re enjoying staying in place while other people travel – it always seems like a good idea to me, especially during holidays. “Simplifying complex nature scenes” – yes!! I especially like the composition and balance on the second sketch.
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beautiful these. Really like the use of negative and positive space.