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.