• Can you really draw anywhere?

    I took my sketchbook with me on a family day out to a farm park with my two-year-old granddaughter. Like most outings with small children, we spent far more time in the playground than looking at the animals. So while she climbed, explored and refused to keep her sun hat on, I took out my sketchbook.

    Drawing children in public is an odd business these days. As a grandfather, people understand why I’m there, but it reminded me how different the world is from the one Shirley Hughes described to me many years ago. She once told me, “Draw every day.” It was advice she lived by, sketching children in the shared gardens where she lived in London. Today we often have to be a little more discreet.

    As I drew, I noticed something unexpected. Beneath the playground slide were tiny tree saplings growing happily in the shelter of the structure. They looked like perfect miniature trees, protected from little feet by the slide above them. They probably won’t survive. Eventually someone will pull them up because, after all, a weed is simply a plant growing in the wrong place.

    That little scene stayed with me.

    Later, while I painted the sketch back in the studio, I realised the drawing wasn’t really about my granddaughter or the playground at all. It was about attention.

    I’m beginning to think that’s where art starts.

    When we sketch, we’re choosing to give our attention instead of having it demanded by the endless distractions of modern life. A sketchbook doesn’t ask for anything. It simply invites us to slow down, notice and remember.

    The drawing itself is almost secondary.

    It’s the evidence that attention happened.

    This idea has been growing in my mind over the last few months, and I suspect it’s going to become an important part of these videos. I’m still working it out, but I hope you’ll enjoy exploring it with me.

  • The Art of Attention

    Last week I went into Matlock Bath with a sketchbook.

    It was early. The tourists hadn’t arrived. The town was quietly getting itself ready for the day.

    I drew the drayman delivering barrels of beer to the pub. Then I wandered down to the river where the pedalo staff were mopping out boats after the previous night’s rain.

    Nothing spectacular, just ordinary people doing ordinary jobs. And somehow that felt enough.

    While I was walking back, I became distracted by sycamore seeds scattered all over the pavement. I found myself picking them up and looking at the extraordinary variety of shapes and colours. Before long my hands were full of them.

    It reminded me of the nature tables I loved as a child.

    More and more I’m thinking that’s what sketching really is, not simply making pictures, but paying attention.

    I’ve spent much of my life drawing to make a living. These days I’m becoming more interested in why we draw in the first place. Drawing slows us down. It encourages us to notice. And once we’ve really noticed something, we rarely see the world in quite the same way again.

    Maybe that’s why a sketch often feels more alive than a photograph. It’s not because it’s more accurate. It’s because it contains time and attention.

    I’d love to know what you’ve noticed recently.

  • For the last few years I’ve been wrestling with a question that I know many artists are asking:

    If AI can create beautiful pictures in seconds, what is the point of being an artist?

    I realised that what I was feeling wasn’t simply anxiety about technology. It was grief. The loss of a certainty about what it meant to be an artist.

    In this video I begin to explore an idea that has been taking shape in my mind.

    Perhaps we’ve misunderstood the role of the artist.

    I imagine culture as a fertile valley that every generation inherits. We all draw from it – its books, music, paintings, films, discoveries and ideas. This is our common wealth: not money, but the shared richness of human experience.

    As artists, writers and creators, our task is not simply to take from that valley but to tend it. To repair a broken gate. To cultivate neglected ground. To plant something new that future generations can enjoy.

    AI may change how images are made, but it doesn’t change our responsibility to contribute.

    Perhaps that has always been the real work of the artist.

    I’d be interested to know whether this idea resonates with you. Please leave a comment below, or get in touch through the contact page.