Postcards in Tate Library

In the latest example of things I have made heading off into the world and having a life of their own, a set of four postcards of my drawings and other items relating to an exhibition of my work at Wolseley Fine Arts, London, in February 1996 are now in the Tate Library at Tate Britain. In 1990, I spent six months drawing my way around England, culminating in that show.

Clockwise from top left: Ludlow Boots; the spires of Shrewsbury; Saxon Church, Bradford on Avon; Roman Baths, Bath.

Digital and tangible sketchbooks: my postgraduate research

My postgraduate research into the collection and accessibility of sketchbooks in the UK's galleries, libraries, archives and museums, which has kept me busy for the past 12 months, is now finished and published online. (Cue the sound of popping corks.) You can find it on Humanities Commons at:

http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6H240

[Update: I am happy to say that it has won the RT Bottle Prize, which is awarded by City, University of London to an outstanding library science dissertation contributing to professional practice.]

Its appeal may be a bit niche. Essentially, it's about how sketchbooks can be found and accessed in the UK's institutions. To do this, I interviewed a handful of people, mainly artists, about their experiences of going into the archives to research sketchbooks, and then sent a questionnaire to sketchbook-holding institutions about how they are collected and accessed – a magnificent 55 of these responded. The sketchbooks weren't just those that belonged to artists, but also those of designers, filmmakers, engineers, architects and others.

Arranging to see and handle sketchbooks in an archival situation requires a bit of forward-planning and organisation, but getting your hands on them can reveal their contents more fully than when they are viewed as printed reproductions or digitally. To hold them and turn their pages in your hands is to better understand them.

But there are many digitised sketchbooks available online that don't require you to head out to the archive to view them in person. Digitisation broadens accessibility to a global scale, and more and more institutions are turning towards sharing their sketchbooks this way: the Hunterian, Glasgow, the Henry Moore Institute, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and Tate Archive are examples of those that show them online. There are, of course, many more.

Reprinted and on shelves

Sketch Your World has been reprinted and is on shelves and in online warehouses again now. I dropped in on the recently renovated Tate Britain – through the main entrance past groups of art students sitting on the steps, which suddenly transported me back to my student days – to visit its bookshop where copies are on sale. (It has a different cover if you are in the US or Asia.)

There's more information about the book at its Facebook page. Let me know if you have problems getting hold of a copy.