Imitation Limestone

Sketchbook page (w/c, pencil & collage)

I have lots of sketchbooks. I went through a long period of collecting them. Most of them are empty, or at best only partly filled.

At University I'd buy two new ones at the beginning of each year, even if the previous ones weren't filled (which they weren't). It felt right, somehow, to divide up the periods of creativity. But I'd also buy others that seemed to offer that special size or shape for some other project I had in mind.

I like the idea of sketchbooks. I suppose that's to do with my love of books as objects. But somehow I've never got in the habit of using them regularly. I think it's because I find loose bits of paper more easily organised into projects. Maybe that's because I always seem to have an interest in several idea-threads at one time.

Curiously, having talked to other artists about this, I find I'm not alone.

In an attempt to try to get some sense into this state of affairs, I've been going through these old sketchbooks - the partially completed ones - to see if I might begin to use them again and also to see if they might conveniently continue with their respective themes (assuming they have any).

There are problems with this. One dates from a trip I made to Malta and is concerned mainly with the remnants of Tigne Barracks. I think that may have to remain discrete. There's another devoted to drawings done inside the Hancock Museum. As such, I regard that as an ongoing project, or at least one to which I'll return sometime in the future.

But the rest are somewhat haphazard, and probably the best that I can do is simply pick up one and fill it, going on to the next.

Going through them, however, has proven supremely beneficial. Tucked inside one of them, evidently marking the place, was a slip of folded paper. And on it was the legend: "Imitation Limestone."

I have found the Recipe for All-Bran Cement!

Of course, as I've long suspected, it has nothing whatsoever to do with All-Bran. But for those of you whose work may have been tottering on the brink, needing only the recipe to continue, here it is:

• 2 parts coir
• 2 parts sharp sand
• 1 part fresh cement
• cement colourant

Something of an anticlimax after all this time.

And the page it was marking? That's it at the top of the post. What was I thinking?