Behind the scenes
My preparatory work for Breather, my piece for 26 Inspirations, part of the Bloomsbury Festival, started with several sketchwalks. I know the route well but it was considerably bendier than it was in my imagination of a linear drawing…
And then there was rain. Biro is wonderfully robust until it, and the paper, get wet, then it sputters to a halt. So some of my sketches were done under the welcome shelter of Cody Dock’s roofed picnic benches.
Colour or black and white line? There was testing for that as well, back in my workspace. This piece being as much about the notes as the sketch, I chose black and white line.
My framing schedule coincided with holiday season, when some exhibition details were still to come. And that’s where being a designer and creative director as well as a sketcher came in handy. I made the final piece an iPad sketch, drawn from one of the preparatory sketches. That gave me the flexibility to have it giclée printed to size.
The exhibition runs from 14 October until mid-November 2022 at the Building Centre in Store Street, London WC1.
Find out more about the project here.
