Filling in the Blanks!

Ah yes, true to the reputation of the ''Canny Scot'', I've been filling in the blanks in my sketchbook! I hate empty pages, don’t know why! In the past it didn’t bother me to have one sketch on the right hand page of my sketchbook and the left blank but now it really gets on my nerves. I'm a big fan of Hahnemühle Watercolour books and have been using them for the last five years at least. Why do I like them? Well, years of travelling with sketchbooks has taught me that they need a robust cover, taking them in and out of bags, and carting them around really tests durability. Secondly, they have an elastic closure which is fab, other than that they fall open in your bag and get all dog eared. The sketchbooks are great if you like, as I do, using lots of different media. At first I had to adjust to the texture of the paper when using lead pencil, the structure of the paper is a wee bit coarse, as the name suggests they are primarily for wet media, resulting in minimal buckling. There is a variety of formats and one that caught my eye recently was a square version, looks very tempting. I've been in love with Hahnemühle's landscape format for ages but posting a full double spread on social media like Instagram is tricky, so maybe I'll give it a go. When I started keeping sketchbooks about 12 years ago I was using Boesner's own brand of bound sketchbooks in a square format, I loved the format but watercolour tended to look a bit dull on the paper and packed as they were with pages which was great, they were heavy to transport. I then tried Canson 180 sketchbooks for travelling, pro's were they had a magnetic closure and they opened out completely flat, great when like me you sketch over a double page on the downside the paper was thin and didn’t take much watercolour without buckling, and that’s when I started with the Hahnemühle Watercolour books. Art equipment was always pricey but I have to say I was shocked at the prices while looking at the new square format! Here’s what I got up to though! 

The sketch on the left was done while out sketching with Urban Sketchers Würzburg but I had annoying gap here on the right. Before the group arrived I'd taken a peek inside the Kulturspeicher and was impressed with the spectacular roof structure, beams, buttresses, joists, glass and lighting created a fascinating crisscrossing of light and detail, built at the same time as the Glasgow School of Art where I studied, it reminded me very much of Charles Rennie Macintosh's masterpiece which tragically burnt down twice. 

There is no way that I could have captured the amazing ceiling in situ and working from my reference photos was tricky enough but I was pleased to have filled in a blank! Here’s the real deal …. amazing isn’t it? Truly wasted as a grain warehouse but now a fabulous place for art exhibitions and cultural events, when I lived here for the first time about 30 years ago it was a dilapidated wreck and now pulsing with new life.