I’ve just finished, this very morning, my small A5 sketchbook. Looking back, I started it in November 2009. That’s just over 4 months. Hmm, not very impressive. I thought I filled them more quickly than that. But then again I do have several sketchbooks on the go at any one time. There’s my everyday, carry-it-whenever-I-can A5, my sit-down-in-front-of-the-TV A4 and my sensible no-point-in-messing-around-here A3, which I use at my drawing board.

There’s no real order to them, other than the A3 sketchbooks which I allocate for each book I’m illustrating. And then there are the square sketchbooks (small, meduim and large), that I can’t resist buying and play around with for a couple of weeks before they dissapear under a pile of – well, usually books. I have way too many of those in my studio. Come to think of it, a lot of them are probably neglected and half finished sketchbooks.

But I digress. Back to my recently finished A5. Well, I’m always a little reluctant to say goodbye to the sketchbook I have on the go. It’s the closest I get to a diary, and it carries my most recent thoughts around with me. When I start a new one I sometimes like to carry a few of the more interesting drawings over, copying them again on the first few pages. It helps to give me a footing, somewhere to start.

Here’s a page I quite like. I’d been thinking about a story with a wolf and a sheep. I say a story, not even that, I just liked the idea of this unlikely couple. So I started to draw them. Scribbles really. But sometimes I feel I have something. So I decided to paint them.

I’m still not sure where they will go, if anywhere, but I’ve grown quite fond of them. I think I’ll start drawing them first in my new A5. Perhaps by the time I’ve finished this one – sometime in June, I guess – I may have found a place for them. A story, a poster, or just a few more pages in a half finished sketchbook..only time will tell.

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