I read an article that said a pencil can write 35 miles.

35 miles! I’m sure that can’t be true. 

But the idea got me thinking about how keen we are to judge our drawing efforts before we’ve had time to develop our skills.

Many people give up on drawing after just a few attempts, declaring, “I can’t draw” or “I have no natural talent.” way too early on in the actual drawing practice.

That’s like judging your fitness level after a week of walking around the block, so it’d be easy to do a couple of drawings that don’t quite work out.

Drawing, like any skill, takes time and practice to develop.

A method that can help is to look at a non-emotional record of progress. It can help you keep calm and not critically self-assess your work until you’ve done a much larger body of work.

In the beginner’s drawing course, I recommend hiding your first attempts in an envelope to look back on in the future. 

When progress in developing any skill is incremental, it can be helpful to have clear times to have a check-in on how things are going and to look back and see what has improved.

35 miles is a lot of shading; that’s 1,000s of contours and a bucket load of erasers!

My proposal in the last post was to try a personal New Year creative experiment.

Just one format, one medium, one subject.

I’ve been focusing on portrait structure, and anatomy with pencil on paper.

Morning Sketches from Jan 2025

Morning Sketches from Jan 2025

Morning Sketches from Jan 2025

There’s a whole story and a whole journey that would have come out of one pencil.

Not only do I remember the sketches that went well, but lots of smudging, erasing and relooking. I also remember how the sun was streaming in through the studio window when I sat down to do the third sketch and the croissant I was going to buy after my practice.

If you’re drawing with pen and ink, put a little pot on the side for empty ink cartridges. 

Keep a bin for used-up paint tubes – not to judge the work but to celebrate a dedication to practice. I think it’s a nice idea just to think in terms of evidence; every artist’s journey is made up of these small records.

Morning class,

I thought I’d share with you a little seascape sketch that I did the other day.

It’s filmed in real-time, so you can actually see how long I take and how my decision process works when drawing.

You’ll see moments when I pause and reconsider what pens to start with and what pens I end up finishing with. You also see me having a cup of tea throughout the sketch because sometimes, just having a brew will give you that little bit of contemplation time to decide what to focus on next.

If you haven’t got 10 minutes to watch it all, I’ve also made a shorter 60 seconds edited version on YouTube shorts (and a 90-second one on Instagram)

Watch along in real-time as I sketch the shoreline of Porthminster beach, St Ives, Cornwall

60-second version below:

Sketching Pens, from Left to Right: Pentel Aquash Pen, Lamy Safari Fountain Pen, Liquitex paint marker, Pentel brush pen, Muji 0.5mm gel pen.

Exploring the narrow cobbled streets of St Mawes, every turn uncovers a charming cottage or an absolutely stunning view. This small historic fishing village is nestled at the end of the Roseland peninsula on the south coast of Cornwall and is magical.

Natural stone, slate, and white lime-washed simplicity, so with pen in hand, I set about capturing some of St. Mawes architectural coastal doorways.

Morning class! This week I’ve been putting together a new ‘Beginners Guide’ for the Art School and wanted to add a few little material sketches. For all the sketches I used the following pens on 220 gsm smooth, heavyweight cartridge paper which can handle light watercolour washes.

Materials – Pen & Wash

• Lamy Safari Fountain Pen – filled with Lamy water-soluble black ink
• Pentel Aquash Waterbrush Pen – this bad boy just holds the perfect about of water in the brush filament tip to wash-in water-soluble ink
• Muji 0.5mm Black Fine Liner – so smooth and works well at any angle at a rapid speed
• Pentel Brush Pen – if you’re struggling  to create broken line effects, treat yourself to this pen, you can block in deep blacks really quickly

Morning Class!

This new Urban Sketching for Beginners Course, reveals how observing everyday life can give an eye-opening appreciation for the towns and cities that we live in.

You don’t need to drive out to the country to draw from life, from an artistic point of view, urban settings have just as much appeal!

The lessons follow a logical progression, from sketching static buildings and monuments to capturing the movement of individual figures and bustling crowds, enabling you to practice your drawing skills and create fast, bold urban sketches with pencils, pens, or watercolors—whatever tools you have on hand.

Topics include:

• Choosing your materials
• Building structure into your drawing
• Sketching architecture
• Capturing panoramic views of a city
• Drawing people in cafes
• Sketching movement
• Bringing it all together in a start-to-finish drawing

This online drawing course shows you how to draw from life, learn how to draw buildings, street scenes, cafés, and people and you can read more here.

Hi, my name is Will and I am an art material addict.

When the new season art catalogue arrives, I prepare a large cafetiere of coffee, find a comfy chair and indulge in a little bit of window shopping.

If I spot a new ‘innovative ink system’, it’s hard to imagine how my drawings can exist without it.

And if a magazine states ‘Free Pen (RRP £30) when you spend £50 or more on drawing products’ I’d be a fool to miss out!

But the reality is, when I take my sketches out of the studio into the city or countryside, there is a recurring theme.

Most of the new materials I buy are left behind in my growing number of art supply boxes and I find myself grabbing the same few trusted pens that work well together – again and again.

In fact, to create a huge variety of styles, it’s probably less than 10 materials and that includes different ink colours.

So this week I want to introduce you to my Top #4 Minimalist City Slicker combination sets that I actually use when I’m out sketching on location…