• Swasky Three Heads, fountain pen and brush pen, 4x113⁄4in (10•30cm).
‘This double page was an exercise that I recommend as an ice-breaker. On the left I took my watercolour palette and tested my yellows and then I finished with the rest of my colours. On the right is an exercise for creating a pattern with watercolour.’
While we all know it can be a great idea to keep a sketchbook, there is, of course, no right or wrong way to use them. They can be whatever you want them to be to suit the way you work. They may embrace colour, or be relentlessly monochrome. Their pages may reveal images straight out of the imagination, or show scenes drawn from observation that are rooted to a time and specific place. But to view some work online it is easy to assume that the aim is to make sketchbooks filled from front to back with immaculate, perfect, social mediaready images.