It’s been a long journey, longer than I’d intended, to bring new work. My intension over the past three years has been to create pieces that express what experiencing the world through anxiety feels like.

It has been a battle. A quiet, solitary one. As I worked every day in my garden studio, experimenting, playing, exploring, I became aware that, in order to create with genuine expression, it was vital I made on-location sketches. Sketches made out there, in the world, where people can…watch me.

urban sketch by Tracey Flynn — Sketch of Waterstones bookshop Newcastle (from a photograph)

This may sound obvious and perfectly acceptable. I mean, I’m an artist - I draw architecture; You would probably expect me to be out with my sketchbook all the time. However, allow me to translate how devastating this realisation was for me, as a social-phobic: I have to take something that’s deeply private into a very public space. It risks attracting humiliation, embarrassment, discomfort and attention. I have to bare my all on the stage of the world with critical assassins poised in the crowd, armed and looking for the weakest target!

Ok, there may not be a lot of assassins in Tamworth, but that’s the noise that’s going on in my head. This is not a situation I will volunteer for and never have done. I do not urban sketch. I have always found working from photographs perfectly acceptable thank you very much.

Until now.

I realised that I was approaching my new work all wrong. I was trying to achieve my task intellectually, I was overthinking it, second-guessing it, thinking about it from the viewer’s point of view; what colour, composition, gesture and media says “anxious”?

Although this isn’t completely wasted energy - and some good ideas have come from these questions, the biggest breakthrough came when one day I was suddenly overtaken with panic and took it out on my sketchbook. After a moment, I took a few breaths and looked at what I’d done. It’s not pretty, but that’s genuine expression, I said to myself.

It was something I hadn’t done before; I’d never turned to art in the midst of an anxiety attack - (or I’d never had an anxiety attack while doing art before). I’d never used drawing to calm myself. I’d never seen the evidence of my emotion left by an inky gesture. It’s never seemed like a good idea to have a loaded paintbrush in hand when feeling particularly vulnerable or spiky. I mean, these are artist quality materials you know! I have been known to break things.

There was also another realisation that day that was like a lightbulb above my head: That’s why I’ve been struggling to make headway with my new work: I hadn’t been feeling so anxious - or been experiencing much of the world, for that matter, due to lockdown! Normal life was now coming back. With the end of covid restrictions, life was going to go back to normal. You know, all the things that gave me social anxiety before covid, that had been cancelled during covid which made my anxiety take a holiday - were now coming back. Obviously it had to happen sometime, I was expecting it and I was expecting the anxiety to come back, like an old friend. Hello. I’ve not missed you. But here you are. Now I’ll have to learn how to deal with you all over again.

Maybe I’d just experienced what a seasoned actor might say to a stage-frightened novice “use your nerves in your performance”. I’ve never understood what that actually means in practice. In my situation, however, it makes perfect sense. I want to express my anxiety, so I must let my anxiety express! Why didn’t I realise this before?!

Oh. Ah. Hmmm. Because it requires me to “allow” the anxiety, to conjure it; to place myself in an anxiety inducing situation and then make art. Sounds like a terrible idea. My anxiety always says that. It’s not a terrible idea, it’s a breakthrough. And before my anxiety [let’s call it Nancy from now on], before Negative Nancy - [or Ne Na for short, like an annoying siren - Ne Na Ne Na] can ruin my moment, I need a strategy.

Problem number one: avoiding doing it.

In my early twenties, my doctor first suggested that the illness I was experiencing was anxiety. She recommended that I avoid those situations that caused my anxiety and she gave me a relaxation tape.

Though the relaxation tape (meditation by another name) should have been helpful, it was not. [Though I have since found meditation a life-changing and valuable tool]. Although her prescription of avoidance has proved advantageous in not doing something I don’t want to do, it doesn’t help me overcome the anxiety in situations I want to be able to enjoy.

Avoidance is like letting the anxiety win. It’s not a solution to the problem. Even though, intellectually, I know that, I experience the battle with this advice every day.

This advice of avoidance has given Nancy permission to talk me out of absolutely anything.

If I don’t need to leave the house, then I won’t.

Even before I received that infamous advice from the doctor, I remember asking myself, "do you really need to go out for that? You have everything you need at home."

I count myself lucky that I’ve always had a loving place to call home. Home has always been a place of peace, comfort and safety.

Why would I ever want to leave it? I know there are a million good answers to that question, but mine has, for a high percentage of the time, been: for inspiration.

Solution to problem one: have more than one reason to do it.

This is true of anything. I’ve found that I’ve been able to stick to a sugar-free diet, keep up a running routine, learn French and all the US state capitals, purely because I’ve identified multiple reasons and benefits in doing so. If one day I can’t be bothered because of one reason, I can fire back with another reason and, if needed, another. Nancy is always starting these arguments, so it’s crucial that the benefits are strong! To say, “you’re an adult, get over it” or “you shouldn’t care what other people think of you” or “you’ll feel so good after you’ve done it!” may all be true, but the benefits are not specific enough to be motivating. I can easily brush off those remarks with… well, a shrug and go make myself a comforting delicious coffee.

So, as my biggest problem is avoiding leaving the house, then the first reason to go out sketching is for inspiration.

It feels like a cruel contradiction that although my anxieties urge me to stay housebound, since art college and my very first adventure outside the UK, I’ve found inspiration in travelling and discovering new places. I’ve been lucky enough to have lived in and visited many beautiful countries and cities over recent years, but because Nancy insists on coming with me, I haven’t always appreciated the experience. For some places, I have very few memories of being there. Nancy takes up so much of my energy and attention that for many years I felt as though I was just “passing through” life. She’s made me miss so much.

Therefore, my reason two is: reclaiming the present moment. I have a few trips planned for this year and I want to enjoy them. I know that sketching and journaling, particularly in a mindful way (conscious of all five senses) helps, not only in appreciating the time and place, but also creates strong memories. I can’t just expect to rock up in a busy Parisian street and feel relaxed enough to sketch, it’s going to take practise, so the more I do it, the better my eye, hand and other senses will be trained and tuned.

My third reason is that I’ve for a long time wanted to develop a consistent sketchbook practice. At the moment I use my iPad a great deal and dip in and out of various sketchbooks, but I believe I miss, not only the tactile, ephemeral beauty of a sketchbook, but also the skills keeping a sketchbook hones.

Problem two: I’m not skilled enough.

Nancy is constantly throwing this one at me! It’ll be a waste of time; you won’t do anything good; all that anxiety for nothing! This problem also touches on my self-consciousness and worry that people passing by will judge my bad drawing and think i’m rubbish.

Solution: skill up.

So I took an awesome online urban sketching course by artist Will Kemp.

Full of invaluable practical tips that boosted my confidence. AND it gave me the perfect excuse to buy new pens and sketchbooks. Will encourages an at-home practice first using photographs to get used to the techniques and materials.

I particularly appreciated his tip for using a small sketchbook, which, at a glance, looks like you’re just taking a photo with a mobile phone. It feels very comfortable and familiar.

Problem three: self-conscious

The most common things Nancy says to me are “people will think you’re weird; they’ll think you’re spying on them or planning a crime”

Solution: go on Sunday morning

Sundays are quieter and a more relaxed kind-of-a-day. It’s the hobbyist’s day. The town is much quieter, slower to open up and mostly only runners and walkers passing through. Choose a dry day. Strap on a back-back. Carry a take-out coffee. One has more licence to dawdle when one has a back-pack and a coffee.

Ready to go

I chose the perfect Sunday morning. I went for an early run to exchange nervous energy with exhilaration.
I then packed my new cute back-pack with my cool new pens and sketchbook. I made coffee in my favourite reusable coffee mug and I was away into the world.

In reality it was far harder to actually leave the house than that. {and I know you’re thinking - “but she’s already left the house to go for a run” And you’d be right. And I’m not going to lie, it takes me longer than most people to leave the house to go for a run too, but then I’m running - which comes with its own set of anxieties - like breathing and feeling judged for being too slow - but I’ve already dealt with all those - it’s taken me years and I still struggle with it, but I’m becoming better and quicker at dealing with it. This other thing is new - so bear with]

As I fumbled around with which key to use to lock the door, anxiety rising, a piece of advice came to me from my old screenwriting friend and mentor Chris Jones: "just get in the room. If you make it to the room, you’ve already done better than most people."

Yeah, just get in the room! Which in this instance means: find the location. You don’t even have to sketch this time. If that’s all I do, it’ll be a win; just scout for good locations I would feel comfortable to sketch in.

Result

I was out for about two hours and managed to make a number of on-location sketches. Here are a few example pages:

What I did wrong and what I did right

It took me a while to settle in and to find a location I felt comfortable with - either too busy or not busy enough. Once I’d found a spot, [I was in the room, now what?] I wanted to take out my sketchbook and just stand for a while, seeing how it felt. I started to sketch.

It wasn’t until later when I looked back over my pages that I realised that all my training went out of the window. I forgot everything I was supposed to do [because I failed to write down my intentions. Big mistake!]

Ne Na took over and made me overly conscious of the very few people who occasionally appeared around me and all I had in my head were apologies for my bad drawings. [Even though, not one person even looked at me, never mind stopped to talk.]

HOWEVER, I DID SOME DRAWINGS. In the street. On my own. Without any major incident. In fact, not even a minor incident. I was expecting my sketches to be like the sketch at the top of this blog that I did from a photograph in my Will Kemp practice session - but none of them do.

That’s not to say I think these are terrible sketches, [though there were a few shocking ones] they’re just not "useful". They’re not what I intended. I need sketches to give me content for my new semi-abstract painting series and these don’t cut it. They don’t tell me anything about my experience that day. I may as well have drawn these from photographs.

I need to give myself some credit however; it was my first time. It might have been because I was conscious of writing this blog and that I was going to share the results with you - what psychologist Eric Maisel calls “Showing anxiety”. It might have been I forgot all my strategy when I came across a small gathering of Anti-vaxxers in the town centre and I overheard the woman behind me say, "move on from covid, we’re over covid, worry about the next world war!" Hello Nancy.

I’m happy that I have a clearer understanding of what I need to do to prep for another on-location session and also what the work needs from these sessions.

But the biggest win of all: I left the house and “got in the room"

Blog

I was an art student who became a screenwriter. Twenty years later, I abandon the page and return to the canvas as I attempt to tell stories through pictures.

Inside the mind of an Anxious Urban Sketcher / part one