The purpose of this SKETCHBOOK PROJECT is to encourage you to work from the landscape and record in your own way, your responses, both structural and emotional.

Your first task will be to collect information in the form of notes, sketches and ideas.
A camera can be used by the photographers amongst you, or as a useful additional tool, whatever your specialisation.

Time spent on this initial research is absolutely essential. If possible, some pre-knowledge of the area, its location and history could prove very useful.

You will be encouraged to work in different media and develop your drawing, mark-making skills. If using a camera, you will need to investigate in the same imaginative and experimental way and keep a working record of your research in your notebook/ journal.

For those interested in working with words, either exclusively or in combination with sketches, you will need to record your responses in an immediate, unselfconscious manner, thinking about the shape, sound and colour of words that describe best your feelings and observations.

It is not purely the structure of the landscape you should strive to portray, although this is certainly a very good point at which to start your enquiry, but how your subject matter relates to everything around it; how it is affected and changed by strength and direction of light; how it can be seen and described in totally different ways from different angles and viewpoints to create ever changing feelings of SCALE, SPACE, MOVEMENT, RHYTHM, PATTERN, TEXTURE, SURFACE, DRAMA and MOOD.

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The success of your first day will depend on your ability to work without preconceptions and unrealistic expectations. You will need to be able to focus and create small contained compositions. A digital camera will allow the photographers to reassess their chosen compositions and where necessary, adjust viewpoints, refocus and look again. You will need to SELECT from all that is around you and maybe deal with only a small area or detail, as if you were looking through a viewfinder of a camera.

For those of you working almost exclusively with the written word, make short, concise sentences, continually re-shaping, re-arranging your pieces. Play with the words. Don’t be precious about your researches at this stage. You would also benefit from being able to illustrate/accompany your pieces with thumbnail sketches so try to make some visual marks, colour notes, however simple. If you prefer, you could use a camera and later combine words with photographs. Likewise photographers could benefit from using a working journal/notebook to accompany their images.

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While making your sketches, try not to concentrate too much at this stage on technique or style, or you may lose, or over work the very qualities that inspired you in the first place.

Try not to tidy up and manicure your work. Try to be experimental and open minded and work in a way you have never worked before.

You can work in any media you choose ( pencil, charcoal, graphite, pen, ink, pastel, paint etc or digital photography).

Try mixing your media.
Try using chalk/pastel on black and coloured papers.

Try using different surfaces (brown wrapping paper, cardboard etc.) and make lots of different marks.

If you decide to use watercolour, try not to draw in pencil first, but go straight on to the paper with the paint and let the brush make the washes/marks for you.

When you use charcoal, use it vigorously and then work in reverse and draw with your rubber into the dark ground.
When you use a camera, look for the unusual angle, explore extremes of focus and try to capture the landscape in a personal and surprising way.

When you are making your notes, think creatively about the words you use. Try to be expressive. Listen to the sound a word makes. Look at the shape of the written word on the page. Play with the arrangement of words. Try to create rhythm, movement and contrast. Explore repetition, alliteration and rhyme and start to build your phrases into a short passage or coherent piece.

There is a wealth of history, myth and atmosphere in Boscastle to experience and interpret.

The landscape is ever changing and inexhaustible. You could work on the same small area throughout the year and discover new things and feel differently about it each time you tackle it. If you were working honestly, you would never repeat yourself.

At the end of your first day, we will gather together, either on location or at the studio to have a look at the work, exchange ideas and encourage new options and possibilities.

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THE SECOND and THIRD DAYS will take you to new locations, concentrating on developing your mark-making skills, whilst encouraging more wide and varied use of media and materials, with a view perhaps, towards producing some larger pieces.

We will also explore the integration of words with image on the page. For those of you able to return in the future, there is the opportunity to progress into more intensive studies, paintings, collection of word pieces with imagery, and explore design/layout options with the possibility of creating a coherent book/story format.

THE BOSCASTLE SKETCH BOOK project allows you to work in your own way at your own pace.
For those of you living outside Cornwall, but wish to progress with their studies, projects and assessment can be continued by email.

THE COURSE aims to encourage students, whatever their age, ability or experience, to work from the landscape and express themselves in a creative and personal way. There is no better place to begin than in Boscastle. The ancient harbour and surrounding hills will inspire, surprise and delight you in ways you could never imagine.

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