The sketchbook comes before the canvas

Small pages, low stakes

I fill about ten pocket sketchbooks a year. Very few of the drawings are good. That is the point: a page that costs nothing gives me permission to try compositions I would never risk on a two-metre canvas.

When a drawing keeps pulling me back — usually a week or two later — I photograph it, print it the size of a postcard and pin it beside the easel. The finished painting rarely looks like it, but the proportions almost always survive.

Selected sketchbook pages are released twice a year as small, signed works on paper. Subscribers to the studio letter see them first.