The Sketchbook Series: Marion Wilcocks

Pen and wash figure study 2

“My sketchbooks are filled with diverse drawings, but here I’d like to focus mainly on people observed in passing, as well as subjects in the Life studio, where I use the sketchbook for preliminary studies or rapid poses.

Action pose

My favourite format is square, with paper robust enough to take a bit of watercolour, and with a stitched binding, so that I can expand across two pages when I want to.


I work fast, and I don’t fiddle with life sketches; they stay the way they arrived on the paper. Sketchbooks are fun to look at because they record immediacy.

Coffee bar

Out and about, I like to draw whenever I can. I explore the way figures form interesting compositions as they recede in perspective, also the extraordinary differences between figure types and shapes.

Travelling by train or bus, I will often draw from…