I draw like a journalist, I’m told – and finding stories has become so instinctive that I only think about it when I explain it to someone else.
So it's been a treat to chat about all things sketching with textile artist Kate Shurety on the last leg of her River Lea walk.
Above, there's a scrap of paper grabbed from my desk to draw the gas works outside as I was called to the window by its rattle and clang. Out on a research sketch walk I spotted a pair of fuel barges lashed together, skilful manoeuvres bringing them in to deliver to a houseboat and head them back out again. So I sketched by way of watching, exchanging waves and cheery greetings with the delivery guy as he chugged under the bridge. And on my walk with Kate, I found myself drawing the time in the view: horse break bricks on the Bow Locks bridge, Goldfinger building, construction in progress.
I rediscovered my sketching habit via This is shorthand, a booklet about drawing as part of my design practice. Challenged by artist Angie Clarke to do a drawing a day until it had to go to press, I didn’t stop. 10 years later, it’s become part of my now multi-stranded creative work.
And Kate’s drawing? It was completely different, unmistakeably textiley (if that’s a word). Yours would be different again – and there’s the joy and the exchange of ideas when we draw together.
If you’d like me to cover your story or run a sketch activity for your organisation, get in touch for a chat.
Photo of me by Kate Shurety.
