Some days I need to just play and experiment and there’s no better place to do that than in my sketchbook.

This spread in my sketchbook was made using gel plate printed collage papers, hand made stencils and masks, acrylic paints, conte crayon and soft pencils.

The gel prints are made using acrylic paints and I printed on a range of papers including lined exercise book pages, vintage book pages, vintage music paper and other scrap papers. The vintage book I used was a sewing manual. I enjoy the way the sewing book text and diagrams show through the prints.

After the printing process came the collage process where I built up the image using my printed papers cut into the shapes of bottles and birds, and layered them on top of each other. I tried to get a good contrast of warm and cool colours.

Finally I drew into the piece using conte crayons, pencils and pastel to add some softness to the edges and to create shadows and depth.

I enjoyed experimenting with different mediums in this sketchbook spread. The title “Messengers in a bottle” references the symbol of birds being messengers from the unconscious mind.

In ancient belief birds were thought to be able to traverse the barrier between earth and the underworld or the barrier between the living and the dead. They were believed to be able to bring messages to the land of the living and visa versa.

In Jungian psychology it is thought that birds can represent messengers sent from the unconscious mind to the conscious mind. The bottles or vessels reference the container of the psyche. These themes and symbols have arisen in my work regularly over the past few months, reflecting a time of my life where I have been introspective and interested in psychoanalysis.