Sketchbook update

I really love working in my sketchbook, which isn't something I thought I'd be saying anytime soon as I've found sketchbooks quite stressful for a few years as my perfectionism and anxieties ate away at me from watching so many curated sketchbook tours online. It took me far longer than it should have to realise that that’s an unrealistic way to work, and that I don’t owe anyone a peek inside my sketchbook. It’s just for me unless I decide otherwise, and now I’ve reclaimed that boundary it’s become my favourite place to work!

One of the biggest issues I had before was feeling like my art would never live up to the niceness of either the sketchbook I was using, nor my work that had come before it. I'd spend ages making a pretty first page, only to then be too scared to draw on the second page and 'mess' it up! I dealt with this firstly by using a sketchbook I bought a few years ago that I absolutely hated. It's a Leuchtturm1917 sketchbook, a brand I was drawn to as it looked just like my beloved Moleskine but with a wider selection of cover options and I'd heard only positive reviews. But I hated it. I still do, although I still might be tempted to by a new one when I'm done with it (those covers!). My issue with it is simply that the paper is weird - it seems to be coated in something and so doesn't take watercolours or gouache at all, alcohol markers bleed worse than anything I've ever seen before, and it repels graphite. Compared to my previous Moleskine sketchbook which could take any medium I threw at it, this was really disappointing and I originally abandoned the sketchbook just a few pages in. And both of these things are what helped me to get over my sketchbook phobia. I'd already 'ruined' the sketchbook by messing up the first few pages, so all of the following pages looked much less scary. And because the paper is crap quality I'm not trying to fill it with finished art pieces like I used to - it's literally just a book of sketches. And that's why I might get another one of the same brand when I've filled this one, as although I hate it and it's poor quality, it's taught me that that's exactly what I need to get out of my comfort zone and lose my anxieties!



Despite just saying that I don't create finished pieces in this sketchbook, here are two finished pieces! Sometimes things just develop organically and it seems silly to transfer them and lose the fluidity of the original sketch, which is why I thought I'd share these pages. Because this sketchbook hates all of my favourite art mediums, I've had to go back what feels like basics and use coloured pencils which I'm really loving! I've got a super old set of Prismacolor Premiere pencils, and I'm loving using them again. I usually use the pencil brushes on Procreate to create texture in my digital work, so it feels good to create that texture for real!

I was inspired to draw Rapunzel as she's one of my favourites and I'd watched Tangled recently which reminded me how much I enjoy it. And the Elsa and Hans drawing was something I worked on bit by bit over a period as stress relief. My art has always been hugely important to my mental health and is almost a form of meditation to me, so sometimes there's nothing better than just switching off my brain and doodling my favourite characters. Sometimes I get a bit caught up in feeling like art has to have some kind of narrative or action involved, so it's nice to remind myself that's not the case and that there's nothing wrong with drawing characters just to create a pretty image with no deeper meaning than that.