Experimentation and inspiration
A week in my creative practice, including ‘Morning Ink’, sketchbook exploration and play, Christmas dinner, Florine Stettheimer, Great Mughal Art and Lowry
As always, depending on your email software, this might be too big for email, in which case, view it on the web (or through the Substack app) instead.
Well, hello weird in between week. Extra weird this year, because Christmas Day and New Years Day are both mid-week, so weekends feel double weird. Today is Sunday. But sort of feels a bit like a Wednesday. And, yes, this missive is coming to you on a Sunday rather than the Friday it’s supposed to go out because, well, I literally have no sense of time right now.
Christmas was nice. A bit weird, because Chris cooked the dinner and that’s normally ‘my thing’.
Not having to (or getting to) run off to hide in the kitchen with my loud music felt a bit wrong. But my youngest bought me a Jane Austen jigsaw puzzle for Christmas and that really really helped me embrace sitting still for hours. And hours.
I did also go out for a walk. Which I usually don’t have time to do.
So, I feel it actually turned out quite well in the end. And the kids really enjoyed the meal. As did I. We may aim for a combined effort next year (or next time we are Christmassing at home, at least).
Morning Ink
This week’s (it’s actually more than a week, but we’ll call it a week, anyway) Morning Ink, included finishing a sketchbook and starting a new one. I am fully committed to the A5 black-cover Seabright sketchbooks. The brief foray into A6 and recycled coffee cup sketchbooks did not make me happy. And these ones are exactly right.
Five tabletops. Including four bottles/jars/jugs of flowers. And an ogee pattern. And a tree with triangle fields. So lots of comfort-space drawing.
Today’s (Sunday 28 December) was a bit more out there and I am accepting the unknown creature walking along an invisible tightrope more now, a few hours after drawing it. Yesterday’s (Saturday 27 December) was drawn with a Christmas gift pen a Tom’s Studio Lumos. It’s lovely. But I still went back to my trusty fountain pen today. I will need to play around a bit to find exactly where the Lumos will fit in my practice. But I am sure it will find a space.
Favourites from this week are the tabletops and the ogee pattern. I am feeling myself very much called to create a series of (bright and colourful) ogee patterns, combining hand-drawn motifs with digital colour. (I am feeling a lot of things calling, actually, which tends to happen at this time of the year, so we will see how many of them actually come to fruition. But… I am going to keep a proper ideas book/file (I am not sure whether to make it physical or digital) so that I can come back easily and find ideas when none are coming. We have a busy publishing work period coming up and it will be useful to have some pleasing art projects to dig into in the evenings.
Sketchbook
The other night, I got out the Florine Stettheimer book that I got for my birthday (which had been hidden away on the shelf under the coffee table - it should really be the only thing on the coffee table, it is so very very beautiful) and sketchbook and pencil and looked through doing little sketches of people in the book, trying to do a little bit of digging into why I love her work so much (aside from the colours, which are very very much my kind of colours).
I feel extremely drawn to the curves in her people.
And I think it also reminds me somewhat of people and animals in Mughal Art (which is something else I am very drawn to).
I really like how she can give the essence of a person even when they’re quite small and in the background.
A skill which makes me think of Lowry.
Of course, the people In Stettheimer’s work are very very different to those in Lowry’s. As are the colours. But there’s a definite connection that I can see.
Never having done any ‘proper’ (aka within the established education system) art training, I think I may be curating my own kind of artist studies. Sketching elements from paintings I love. And then taking those sketches further and in different directions.
I hereby promise to gift myself the time and space to do more of this in 2026 and beyond.
iPad
I took some of the sketches into the iPad to see what I could do with layering them and colouring them digitally. I quite like how it worked out, so will definitely playing with this work process some more and hopefully bringing it into some final pieces.
And playing with different background colours.
I really like love the energy and messy looseness in the pencil. It’s something that I absolutely feel I lose when I go from sketch to final in my digital process. Of course, there are certain situations where that’s what you need and want, but this kind of energy is calling to me loudly.
So, now I need to play around with this process with ideas from my own head not very slight tweaks of Florine Stettheimer’s ideas! Though I will be very very happy to keep a bunch of inspiration from her within whatever comes out.
Another bit from the iPad from this last week and a bit was this bright and colourful tile pattern.
So, what’s been calling to me lately is loose, messy lines, very bright colours and curves and flowers and ogees. Colour I think calling the loudest. I don’t think I want to stop the black and white Morning Ink practice. But maybe a bit more colour sketchbook time would be good.
Happy New Year
I am not sure yet whether I will do an end-of-year/start-of-year post (I probably will, but no promises), so I will wish you a Happy New Year in case I’m not back in your inbox until next Friday (or in case I forget what day it is again and don’t appear until back-to-work/back-to-school 5 January).
I hope that 2026 brings more of what you need, whether that’s time, adventure, peace, love, commissions or something else.
I’m sharing my Morning Ink daily on Notes and on my Sketchbook Instagram account, if you’re missing the daily dose of black and white drawing.
Thanks so much for being here. Your presence on its own is a joy, but I love to hear from you, too, so please do feel free to leave a comment. About something that has resonated for you in this week’s pictures. Or just about something that’s happened in your life or your creative practice. Anything. If you want to go even further you can take out a paid subscription – if you’re happy to give me your postal address I'll send you some art of some kind in the post.
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