This weekend we visited Brownsea Island and spent a quiet afternoon on the beach. The weather was grey and cool at first, but when the sun finally appeared my wife and a newly-discovered relative decided to brave the sea.
While they waded into the cold water, I pulled out a small watercolour postcard and made a quick sketch.
Looking at it later, I realised something. People often ask how I developed my loose sketching style.
I don’t think looseness is something you can simply learn. It comes from years of drawing, observing and making mistakes until you finally trust yourself to leave things out.
In this video I try to recreate the sketch in the studio and discover why it worked in the first place.
The answer isn’t really about watercolour technique. It’s about attention.
When we’re sketching, we’re forced to slow down. We notice things. We spend time looking. Every brushstroke becomes attached to a memory of the moment.
In a world full of photographs, social media, AI-generated images and endless distractions, perhaps that’s the real value of sketching. Not that it produces a picture, but that it helps us pay attention.
Watch the video below and let me know what you think.
Can a sketch sometimes tell us more than a photograph?
What do you think?