Fashion Illustrator Angie Rehe of Patsyfox.com

Freelance fashion illustrator Angie Rehe began keeping a sketchbook at the suggestion of her high school art teacher, and has accumulated shelves full in her home studio in Northcote since her days as a fashion design student at RMIT in the late 1980s. But she admits she's ambivalent about their contents.

Angie Rehe of patsyfox.com

& thedrawingsalon.com

"If you notice the amount of sketchbooks I have there's a million, and I think there's two that are full," she says. "Apparently I'm very good at starting sketchbooks and not very good at finishing them. I can't help buying them, because (of) the potential when you flick through a gorgeous sketchbook of it being filled with fantastic drawings. But then I want to go on to a new one after a certain way through it."

The blessing and curse of a sketchbook is that it's a spontaneous and therefore uneven collection: visual treasure and trash that provides a great visual snapshot of your life, skills and preoccupations at the time but which can be unintentionally hilarious and excruciatingly embarrassing to look back on, much less to share with anyone else. 

"I go backwards and forwards on my view of ... whether you can edit a sketchbook or whether you commit to keeping everything in," Angie says. "I personally think that you should keep your sketchbooks fairly private so that when you draw in them you're not drawing through other people's eyes. It's like dance as if no one's watching. If you're thinking about other people flicking through your sketchbook or showing other people you're going to be self-conscious about the drawing and you're not going to be as loose, and you're not going to experiment, and they're just not as good."

The problem is, as a freelance fashion illustrator, it can be useful to show clients particular sketches in books you know they won't be able to resist flicking through, and which you know also contain the odd bung-eyed portrait and nudes of ex-boyfriends you'd rather not share. Thankfully, scanning and Instagramming the desired sketch now offers the perfect way out of that particular bind. 

Unapologetic, warts-and-all self-expression is fine for the fearless, but for mere mortals the ideal sketchbook would surely allow users to surreptitiously purge duds and add gems at will? "I talk about this when I teach drawing, that I don't believe every drawing has a right to life," Angie says with a laugh. "I did a big edit of my old sketchbooks and drawings a few years ago and it was actually the best thing I ever did. Because there's no point keeping old work that you really hate, that's just bad, and therefore makes you feel bad when you look at it.

"I find I can remember how I was feeling when I drew things, so when I look at a drawing it conjures up the situation I was in at the time and whether I was happy or not. So if a drawing has those feelings embedded in it that you don't like, I think just get the hell rid of it. I got rid of all my shittiest work, and my self-esteem went up so much because then when I went through my drawers and books - I keep drawings all over the place - I'd see my favourite work and I'd start believing my own hype, that I did lots of good stuff, because I'd eliminated the evidence.

"You do want to keep some old stuff so that you see progress, though. This is the flip side of this argument. Because progression is good, getting better at something is good, so you want to be able to see the evidence of that - where you came from and what you do now. But, if they're a bit grotesque, I say burn 'em."

Keeping sketchbooks was a habit that came easily to a gal who has always loved to draw and felt the urge to capture ideas in the moment. "I would always carry around this small notebook and a pencil and while I was stuck waiting or listening or something I would sketch," Angie recalls of her RMIT years. "It was part of what I was doing, I guess - studying fashion and therefore having ideas, and always liking drawing and wanting to draw and to practice that. So it was just natural." 

These days she waxes and wanes in her approach, often allowing the sketchbook itself to suggest new routines and materials worth trying. "It's all about experimenting," she says. The glorious Italian paper of a Fabriano sketchbook begs for works in watercolour, but in other sketchbooks she plays with inks, pencils and collage too. Lately she's been experimenting with portable media like Tombow and Japanese watercolour pens. A few years back a day-to-a-page Moleskin diary inspired her to attempt daily drawings, often as a warm up exercise for commercial work or paintings for her blog. "It was hard," Angie concedes. "I said to myself, 'it doesn't matter how quick or little it is,' but it was really, really hard. So I'd get behind and I'd cheat - I'd take it to life drawing and fill in a bunch of pages. Sometimes I'd use it for rough sketches of what were going to be bigger works ... and it worked quite well for that. But I got to about August and just fell in a complete heap."

Angie's a dedicated sketcher when she travels. A tiny, concertina-style sketchbook she filled with streetscapes and building details as well as portraits and fashion sketches during a 2012 trip to New York, Paris and London led directly to a visual merchandising assignment on her return to Melbourne. She also found inspiration on that trip from a road atlas discarded on rubbish night outside the New York apartment she was staying in. She'd never before considered doing life drawings on maps,  but found herself temporarily obsessed, despite the obvious challenges. "It's kind of visually confusing to draw on something so busy but I really liked the look of it," she says. 

The most impressive travel sketchbooks she's ever flicked through belong to Brooklyn-based fashion illustrator Bil Donovan. He builds up montages of images like the faces of various train commuters he spots on his journeys, often adding layers of colour and detail back in his studio. "They're just magnificent," Angie says.

Sketching in public elicits some fascinating responses from passersby. "If you draw in public people feel absolutely open to coming up," Angie says. "They'll stand and watch over your shoulder and they'll start talking to you. You suddenly become public property." 

It can make for some intriguing conversations, but it also pulls her out of the deeply meditative, utterly self-contained space she disappears into when she draws. Her favourite part of the whole sketching process, in fact. "When I'm drawing I just kind of disengage with what's around, so it's just my own personal head space," Angie says. "I think that drawing has a very meditative feel, because it's so right brain. When you are really into it you're in your own little world. And if that is in a foreign location or wherever, all the better."

Check out Angie's amazing illustrations and workshops on patsyfox.com and thedrawingsalon.com.