A concertina sketchbook collaboration - Part One

An art adventure combining oil and cold wax and acrylic mark making in collaboration with Cornish artist Sophie Velzian

Image ©️Mary Price and Sophie Velzian 2023

Oh what a joy it has been working on a sketchbook collaboration. I have to share this with you in the hope that you might be inspired to give it a go.

Have you ever done this? If not I highly recommend it as an exercise in freedom, to learn from another artist’s techniques and as a way of creating an amazing bond through understanding and gaining deeper insights into new ways of doing things and art processes.

This article focuses on the first couple of weeks in the development of one of the two sketch books I have been working on with Sophie Velzian. I intend to continue to reveal more about the project in a future article as the two sketchbooks unfold and develop.

How the collaboration started

I belong to an artists group called Prime Women Artists (PWA) - a supportive and collaborative group based in Cornwall aiming to grow visibility and connection for women artists in Cornwall.

As a Kernow lover I was kindly welcomed in to the group when it formed in May 2023.

A few members in PWA had recently decided to explore the idea of sketchbook collaborations. Lots of artists in the group who wanted in had names pulled from a hat and we were randomly matched with another artist. I was matched with landscape artist Sophie Velzian.

When we began our sketchbook Sophie and I had met just once at the inaugural meet up for the group.

But beyond that our art was not well known to each other so I was initially wondering how we might blend our work as a collaborative project. The challenge both intrigued and excited me and I thought I would approach it with an open mind and see what might emerge.

Known for her evocative, atmospheric landscape paintings Sophie derives inspiration from her daily swims and walks around the environs near the beautiful Helford River.

‘Shining Waters - Helford’ ©️Sophie Velzian 2023

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‘The challenge both intrigued and excited me and I thought I would approach it with an open mind and see what might emerge.’

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Sophie has used many media and techniques over the years since graduating from the Slade School in London. Her current preferred medium is oil and cold wax. Her paintings have a wonderful ethereal quality picking up different impressions of landscapes that are filled with light and rich colours.

Our work is so different. I make acrylic and mixed media paintings distinguished by intense saturated colour, detailed mark making and signature symbols.

‘It’s a wonderful day’ ©️Mary Price 2023

How would we blend our styles? How would we respond to a backdrop provided by another artist. How would the media we use work together?

We had a WhatsApp call to discuss the project and agreed that neither of us would be precious about our work and that we would treat the project as an interesting experiment and see where it might lead.

I have long used Seawhite of Brighton concertina sketchbooks to create visual diaries of my travels so I suggested that we might begin by filling one entire side of a book. The concertina books have 36 pages on each side so we had lots of space to make our initial statement for each of us to respond to.

Here are some of the pages that I sent to Sophie.I used a limited palette and covered the entire sketch book in distinctive marks that appear in many of my paintings. Excuse the video - it’s made in portrait mode as I filmed it initially for Instagram.

For Sophie it was the first time using one of these books so it was interesting to me to find out how she would enjoy working in this format.

After our call we both ordered a book and within a week I had received a book from Sophie.

To say I was totally in awe puts it mildly. The book was a treasure already - filled with the most beautiful soft rich colours with a waxy texture. The marks were very abstract but like a series of mini paintings that at first I felt a bit reluctant to ‘spoil’.

However this was not what the collaboration was about - my part was now to respond to Sophie’s backdrop and to discover how my medium of choice, acrylic paint, might respond.

There were some beautiful surprises. The wax resist caused thinly applied paint to separate into gauze like nets of pattern. Thicker paint was easier to apply and the wax did allow the paint to adhere.

Showing details of the reactions of acrylic paint overlaying the cold wax and the gauze like nets of pattern

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‘I was conscious throughout of wanting to blend our styles but also to find out how the different media worked together.’

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Creating textures by peeling away paint with a catalyst tool knife or by scratching lines with skewers revealed the backdrop and made interesting contrasts. Applying liquid acrylic paint using a variety of tools including twigs, plastic lids, skewers, paint brushes and catalyst mark makers created magical effects.

I was conscious throughout of wanting to blend our styles but also to find out about how the different media worked together.

As I progressed through the pages of the book I became more tuned in to Sophie’s style and less inhibited about adding my responses. I started to work with the ‘underpainting’ using it as a backdrop for my mark making sometimes picking out abstract imagery where shapes suggested planets, rivers or hills.

In the image below I love how the mixed media have blended creating some beautiful effects - you see here the way acrylic paint has separated in the orb shape by the cold wax rejecting the watery pigments of the acrylic paint and at the base how the Posca pen drawing creates an interesting contrast.

So much of the beauty comes from what cannot be controlled. The media speaks and as an artist you need to work with that.

Image ©️Mary Price and Sophie Velzian

I spattered paint and introduced acrylic inks to create on one page the appearance of flocked marks that could be birds flying across landscapes. The paintings started to become intuitive worlds much as my work often unfolds but this time working with an alien starting point that inspired a new kind of painting.

Image ©️Mary Price and Sophie Velzian

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‘So much beauty comes from what cannot be controlled. The media speaks and as an artist you need to work with that.’

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The extraordinary marks created without much help from me came from the way the wax rejected the paint in places. As the sketchbook progressed I began to understand how to manipulate this and make it do what I wanted it to do.

Once the wax has been layered up with the acrylic I used the wonderful backdrop as a foil for delicate marks, dots and brush strokes bringing in some of my signature symbols.

I can see how the experiments in this sketchbook are highly likely to inform future paintings. Working in this way has given a space for an exciting exploration without any pressure to develop a finished ‘product’.

It was just what I was looking for after feeling burned out from marketing. I had the desire to move in new directions and the sketchbook collaboration has provided me with a welcome learning distraction, enabling creative muscles to be flexed as well as making a new artist friend. We are meeting up in the New Year to work on a real life collaboration- I can’t wait!’

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I can see how the experiments in this sketchbook are highly likely to inform future paintings. Working in this way has given a space for an exciting exploration without any pressure to develop a finished ‘product’.

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I asked Sophie what she had gained from the project so far

“The concertina sketchbook collaboration with Mary has been a complete eye opener for me. It has been so refreshing and fun to work on something where you genuinely have to let go, trust the process and embrace someone else’s approach and style whilst also finding your own voice.

It is so exciting to see this unfold and the sum of the parts is giving birth to a whole different style of painting that captivates and excites me.

“I have found this very liberating, and as we have got deeper into the project we are finding that our different styles are influencing each other. For me, I love the confidence and joy of Mary’s direct drawing and mark making, and this is influencing my own use of deliberate marks. I can recognise in the later pages from Mary the “grunginess” (we both agreed that was a good word!) in my own layers and textures.

“It is so exciting to see this unfold and the sum of the parts is giving birth to a whole different style of painting that captivates and excites me.

“A truly wonderful project, and I recommended to any artist, and would also suggest that seeking out potential “opposites” is a great way of opening yourself up to new ideas and influences.”

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Image ©️Mary Price and Sophie Velzian

Image ©️Mary Price and Sophie Velzian

Image ©️Mary Price and Sophie Velzian

Read Sophie’s article about our collaboration here

View more of Sophie’s work here

A future article will show how our sketchbooks conclude.