drawanyway.com

Colleague and I slipped out of the office this lunch time to visit an Open Studio event. I was extremely surprised to find that a company whose products I’ve seen in all the glossy magazines is actually local to my home town of Brighton - and their studio was just down the road. Sukie make a very distinctive kind of product. Their books are beautiful: travel journals with pockets to put your treasures in; notebooks with a big picture of a leaf on every page; children’s journals with free stickers included.

I was even more surprised when I saw the prices they were selling old stock at. No wonder people were queuing up and leaving with their arms absolutely full. I joined them.

One of my favourite buys was a notebook of recycled paper, each page featuring random sections of numbers. I’ve written many times before about finding new ways to surprise yourself in drawing, to shake yourself out of ruts. One fine way to do this is to see where shapes on the page lead you, be that a picture in a magazine that you’re doodling over, or coffee stains on your office print-out. These pale numbers are just perfect for that, too - odd curves and lines may find you turning your pen to new directions.