Juliette Orton

  Continuing on from my previous blogs looking at how I am developing my 'Layering' sketchbook, I have now completed the Feathers section. It's funny as I thought I'd almost finished it before but I kept having more ideas - inspired by Christian Dior and my grandmother (see below!). I had another look at a photo I took of some feathers I had collected on a walk recently and extended it using a black fineliner. It's amazing how many different styles, shapes, patterns and sizes of feather there are and that's on just one type of bird!   I was having a think about how I could develop my feather investigation into a product and decided to look at Dior's use of feathers in fashion over the years, some amazing pieces, particularly hats. It was then that I remembered something about my grandmother modelling hats in the 1930s so I had a chat to my Mum and looked through some old photos. Apparently in her 20s, my grandmother worked for Res...

Since I've started a new sketchbook recently I thought I could do a diary of sorts to explain how I have put the various sections together. I chose the theme of 'Layering' as I was looking through some old A-Level Art & Design question papers and this topic appealed to me. If you want to create your own sketchbook obviously you could choose any theme you like, just make sure that it's something that interests you and you will find plenty of inspiration. I favour an A3 size sketchbook but there are no hard and fast rules on this, and it's best to go for a scale that you feel comfortable with. I started out with a title page and a 'mind map' of written ideas of anything that I felt could relate to the theme of 'layering', a brainstorm of sorts. This is a good way to get over the dreaded 'first page fear' when you just can't bring yourself to start your pristine book and any mark you make is overly scrutinis...