Reflecting on a well used sketchbook

Years ago, I made the terrible decision to throw out a box of filled sketchbooks. At the time, I was all about decluttering, self-improvement, and becoming a minimalist. Now, I think differently, and I think I have matured a bit. I have realized that there is nothing like touching the actual pages and holding something in my hands years later. I haven’t thrown out any more sketchbooks since then, but thankfully, I don’t have an issue with storage as much as I did at that point in my life. This latest filled sketchbook will join some others in a hard to reach storage area under my bed, where it will be waiting to be flipped through at some later point years down the road.

There were a lot of false starts in this sketchbook. When I was dealing with my eye issues, I tried to draw before I was ready. Then, I ended up leaning into drawing on Procreate more, because I could zoom in and see easier. That led to rusty drawing (on paper) skills, and more false starts.

My favorite pages in this sketchbook were simple florals sketched in pencils and painted in watercolor. In the past, I used to draw in ink a lot more and then go in with watercolor wash, but I really like just sketching in pencil too. I think it looks a lot cleaner and less risk of getting too heavy-handed with the pens.

Now, that I am done with this main sketchbook that I was working on, I’m going to also work through a few others I have in progress. I would like to keep the number of “in progress” books down to a minimum. I still have a few pages left in my travel sketchbook, which I will use for some landscape sketches from my Scotland trip.

The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time. -Abraham Lincoln

Some links for you:

• Travel sketchbook inspiration.

• Speaking of having a lot of sketchbooks in progress, I found this video from Sarah Burns validating, which dealt with “rules” that she made for her sketchbooks. These rules led her to having over twenty sketchbooks in progress. Thankfully, I have never had an issue to this extent, but I’ve had five or six started before, and that’s pushing it for me.

• This article from New_ Public delves into the indie web. You can really get into a rabbit hole from this article. I spent a few hours. It gave me a feeling of validation that I am on the right track with some of the things I am working on. (I’m working on setting up a digital garden, inspired by this post from Carolyn Yoo.)

• A new to me artist, Kening Zhu. I love her website because there are all these little paths that you can take to explore.

Until next time,