Drawing on the Spot: Inside Erin MacLeod's Sketchbooks
When Erin MacLeod started showing her sketchbook pages in 2019, she thought of them as a side project. Five years later "Sketchbook Cities" is one of the most requested parts of her work. The drawings are small, usually about sixteen by eleven inches, and each one is made in a single sitting.
Her kit is simple: a fountain pen with waterproof ink, a small box of watercolours, two brushes and a block of hot-pressed paper. She picks a spot, often a bridge or a corner with a good view down a street, and draws for twenty minutes before any colour goes on. "If the drawing is wrong, the paint won't fix it," she says.
The washes are kept light. In "Ponte Pietra, Verona", the red brick of the Roman bridge and the bell tower behind it are painted warmly, but the river is left as bare paper. In "Brandenburg Gate, Berlin" the crowd at the foot of the columns is just dabs of blue. "I stop as soon as the page starts to feel finished," MacLeod says. "Usually that is a little earlier than I expect."
Some drawings stay as they are. Others become the starting point for oils. "Gondolier at the Water Door", drawn from a small bridge in Venice in 2019, was the first step toward a larger Venetian canvas two years later. But MacLeod insists the drawings are not just studies. "They are what I actually saw. The painting is what I decided to keep."
Several drawings from the series are available through her website, framed in plain white mats. Prices start at CAD 350.