How it all Started
My sketchbook collaboration project started from an act of kindness really. I had seen on social media that artist Sue Bulmer was focussing for a whole year on creating concertina sketchbooks as a way to fuel her creative soul. Her plan was to create one sketchbook every month.
how could i reach out
As an artist I seem to generate and collect lots of collage papers, too many to ever use myself. As I sat in my studio surrounded by mountains of collage paper, I was inspired by Sue’s project and thought I should send her some of my collage papers for her to use in her sketchbooks. I was thinking how much I would enjoy receiving a package of papers from another artist.
What marks, what colours, textures and types of papers would be different to those that I usually use.
So I selected a range of handmade and found papers, wrote a note, packaged it all up and sent it off in the post…I don’t think Sue will mind if I say that she was very surprised and overjoyed to receive such a surprise package in the post.
What happened next
We arranged to have a video call so we could chat, we immediately hit it off and soon decided that we should think of a combined project that we could work on together, our sketchbook collaboration project was born.
Mindful and very low pressure
We wanted it to be low key with no pressure as we both already had pretty full schedules, we made our own rules, or rather decided not to have any! The basis of the project was that we both made a concertina sketchbook, each of us would work on a few pages in any way we chose and then we would post the book to the other artist for them to carry on.
It was fun to receive the book in the post, to see what Sue had done and what goodies she had sent for me to work with. I found working in the book calming, it didn’t have any expected outcome, just a fun few hours. Once I started in the studio, the pages took on a life of their own.
A friendship has been formed
From that moment our friendship has grown, we now have regular video calls and even arranged an in person meet to exchange our sketchbooks, visit a gallery and have a lovely art chatty lunch.
A joyful resource
The books we have made are a joyful playful resource. Packed full of colour and marks, one very pink the other blues. Some pages shout that they need some calm, others need more to be added. Already we have been working for just over a year and there is more to come.
I would highly recommend thinking about doing your own collaboration project as it is a great way to spark new ideas, make connections, push you to respond to marks and colours that you may never have chosen.
How to start you own creative collaboration
Find out how to start your own creative collaboration in my next blog post.
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