Cutting, sticking and colouring in…

MUSIC CREDIT: Stay on the Road by Sully Bright licensed for use via EpidemicSound

A gleeful disregard for outcome

I’m welcoming in a gleeful disregard for how my sketchbook pages turn out. I’m craving cutting, sticking and colour. Basically a small dose of childlike enthusiasm and creative messing about.

After a busy week, during which my sketchbook has been rather neglected, I'm opening it today with one ambition: to delight myself, invite in pleasure and have fun with art supplies.

Re-visting an old sketchbook

At the start of this year, I made a tiny promise to myself, to fill up the sketchbooks I already have, before buying any more. This one is half full of mixed-media cups. I made them, I loved them and then I put the sketchbook on a shelf and promptly forgot about it.

So today, I'm going back to this old sketchbook and adding in some more cups.

Nothing wasted

There's something I find genuinely joyful about repurposing what already exists. Taking something already made and giving it a second life. Nothing wasted. No starting from zero. Recycling, reusing, re-imagining. Here the drawing has already done some of the work; all I have to do is cut it up and use it as a springboard to something new.

This approach feels like a low-pressure starting point. Instead of facing a blank page, you enter into a conversation with something that has already been created, a scrappy warm-up drawing can become the starting point for something else.

Creative freedom and improvisation

A gleeful disregard for outcome offers us creative freedom. We take more risks. We become more improvisational.

My invitation to you this week is to consider how you can lower your expectations and so increase your delight.

If you’d like to sign up to receive emails from me and get my free Sketchbook Love mixed media sketchbook class you can here.

Sketchbook Revival: Free Sketchbook Challenge

I’m delighted to share a lovely free opportunity with you. I’m a tutor in Sketchbook Revival, a free online sketchbook challenge, and registration is now open.

Dates: April 11–21, 2026
11 days · 30+ artists · 34 sessions

Each day offers a selection of sessions from a wonderful group of practising artists, all sharing different ways to explore creativity in a sketchbook. You can dip in and out as you like, there’s no pressure to do everything.

In my session, we’ll be creating a forest of weird and wonderful trees from the imagination, using drawing and mixed media. It’s a playful, accessible session, very much about enjoying the process.

What I particularly love about Sketchbook Revival (organised by the lovely Karen Abend) is the flexibility. You can:

• Join from home, at your own pace

• Choose only the sessions that appeal to you

• Take part for free

It’s a gentle way to begin, to restart, or to bring a little more energy into your sketchbook practice. If it sounds like something you’d enjoy, you can sign up here:

A quick note: as a participating artist, I’m an affiliate for the optional VIP pass (which gives extended access), so I may receive a small commission if you choose to upgrade. The challenge itself is completely free, and I only ever share things I genuinely feel are inspiring and worthwhile.

Is this good enough?

These days, I find myself moving away from asking if a piece of work meets some "good enough" standard. Earlier on in my art career, this question always seemed to be with me.

The question that sits underneath

Is this good enough to share? Good enough compared to what I’ve seen other people doing?

And that question usually carries another more pernicious question underneath it, doesn’t it?

The real question I was probably asking myself was ‘Am I good enough?'

A different energy in the studio

I notice a very different energy in my studio now. I’m unsure if that’s due to my age, experience or my hormones.

It could, in part, be from a sense of rage and rebellion against powerful men getting away with terrible things. Just witnessing what is playing out on the world stage makes me want to be far less accommodating, less appeasing, less approval seeking.

I have found myself to be increasingly uninterested in asking whether something is good enough. It’s an impossible binary grading system, that is often unhelpful.

A more profound question

I’m much more interested in asking something perhaps more meaningful:

• Does this feel how I want it to feel?

The questions I ask myself about my art are now more along the lines of: Does it feel true to what I wanted to explore? Have I stayed with the idea long enough to see what happens?

When the answer is yes, the work becomes much easier to stand behind. This is what I’ve made. This is what I wanted to explore today. This is what needed to come out of me and onto the page.

The lens change from 'Is this good enough?' to 'Does this feel right to me?' It is a shift from judgement to expression. From caring what other people may say to caring what I feel. From outside of me to inside of me.

And I wonder…could this be a useful reframe for you too, what would happen if, instead of asking 'Is this good enough?', you asked 'Does this feel how I want it to feel?'

Books and links:

The Ruth Asawa Foundation

The Joan Mitchell Foundation

Ruth Asawa Through Line, edited by Kim Conaty and Edouard Kopp, published by Yale University Press 2023

Joan Mitchell, by Sarah Roberts, Katy Siegel, published by Yale University Press 2021

Collage and pen sketchbook pages

Small studies and experiments

Mixed media sketchbook page, ink, collage and pen

Pleasing yourself in your art

A different energy

Historically, I’ve had a default setting. It’s called “Try a little bit harder.” Go above and beyond. Over-deliver. Maximum effort. Try to please people. This ‘good girl’ energy can sneak into all sorts of areas of life.

In the last few years I’ve become much more aware of this tendency of mine and how easily it can creep into my art practice if I let it.

The older I become, the more I move away from ‘good girl’ and instead I want to fully embody ‘joyful woman’.

Deeper not harder

At the moment, I’m in an experimental phase in my work. I’m definitely trying things out, following ideas, letting things overlap and embracing the ambiguity.

But I’m not doing any of it with a “try harder” energy. I want to try many different things, yes, be experimental, yes, but I don’t want anything to feel harder, or to be about force or pushing through.

I just don’t want to strive or try harder. I don’t want anything in my life to feel soaked in strenuousness, I want to welcome in ease and flow, rather than effort and force.

I’d like to go deeper, perhaps, but not try harder. It is an important nuance for me.

Art is a good teacher

I’m also not trying to please an imagined audience. I gave that up several years ago. I’m trying to please myself. To enjoy the process and enjoy the outcome. That’s it.

Art making can be a very good teacher about life. It can show us how we approach things in general.

The sensibilities, the vulnerabilities, the conditioning, the values we carry can all come along with us into the studio.

Acrylic paint on paper

Acrylic painted on paper

Some recent pages in my sketchbook

Looking back at older sketchbooks and seeing what I’m enjoying

Inside my sketchbook

Sketchbook explorations

Past and current work on my desk

Ease and experimentation

I’ve found that the things I seek in my art are often the same things I seek in my life: Joy. Expression. Delight. Playfulness. Wonder. Boldness. Freedom. A kind of unapologetic-ness.

And the way I invite these things into the studio is not by pushing myself harder or trying harder. If my art starts to feel like a place where I’m proving something or testing my capabilities, it stifles the very thing I seek.

Don’t try harder

I’ve learned that if I give things enough time and space, if I let ideas evolve rather than trying to neaten them too quickly or force anything, if I give myself the grace to mess about, ideas usually begin to organise themselves.

So the reminder I’m giving myself at the moment is simple:

Don’t bring a “try harder” energy.

Bring inquisitiveness.

Bring play.

Delight yourself. Invite in a sense of wonder.

And stay with it for long enough...keep going.

Looking back through my creations…

Embracing creative uncertainty

I’ve recently finished a series of paintings and have also completed a few creative projects I’ve been working on. Everything has come to a culmination. There’s always a strange, spacious stretch after that. The work is complete, the decisions are made and the energy that carried it all to completion has dissipated. And I’m left in the liminal space between projects…

Finished painting and sketchbook page

Finished painting and sketchbook page

I used to find this ‘uncertain and undecided’ gap in my creative flow deeply uncomfortable. I like clarity. I relish a clear direction of travel, something to pursue with the same focus and vigour as the work I’ve just completed.

But over the years, I’ve learned that this in-between phase isn’t actually a gap in my creativity at all. It’s simply the beginning of the next creative cycle. This is the fertile void.

It’s the phase where I gather and seek, where I spend more time in my sketchbook. I try small experiments without expecting them to become anything significant, I let ideas percolate rather than forcing them into shape.

In my creative practice, I move between what’s often called divergent and convergent thinking and making.

Divergent thinking is expansive. It’s idea generation. It’s broad, its mixing, experimenting, widening the scope. It’s allowing disparate threads to unfurl without rushing to connect them.

Convergent thinking is focused. It’s narrowing in, choosing, it’s pursuing an idea and developing it into a body of work.

Right now, I’m in divergence. And I’m learning not to rush this phase. It’s at this stage that I build visual ideas, where I test without consequence, where I make small decisions that don’t feel important until they are. The ideas for my next painting series or creative project won’t arrive fully formed. They will grow out of this time of creative exploration, this time where I’ve given myself permission to ponder.

So the advice I am giving myself at the moment and which perhaps may be useful for you too is to ensure the gap is fertile and nourishing, rather than just empty. Seek out the things that fill your creative well. Don’t abandon your creative self, feed her what she needs. Keep noticing. Let your next thing grow at its own pace.

Sketchbooks: Process, Play & Practice

The exhibition at Endicott College

I was turned down from a UK art school more than twenty years ago. The feedback? My work was “too decorative.”

Now, more than twenty years later, I am excited to have a solo exhibition at Endicott College, a respected institution in the US.

Sketchbooks with Soul: Process, Play & Practice brings together large-scale scans of my sketchbook pages. (Visitor information below).

The same kind of pages I’ve been making for years: personal, layered, exploratory. I didn’t imagine they’d ever be shown in a gallery, let alone one within a bustling art school...

This feels like a small yet meaningful inflection point.

Having my sketchbook pages at the heart of an art school is just wonderful. I champion the importance and value of an art education; the world needs more artists and more creative thinkers.

Perhaps this can serve as a small moment of encouragement: keep going, follow your own unique path, despite the odd obstacle, we get where we’re going eventually.

This video is shown as part of the exhibition

My love of sketchbooks

I love sketchbooks.

A sketchbook is a place to work things out and figure out who we want to be as artists. Both a place and a practice to help us unearth our unique interests and fascinations.

Sketchbooks are not about perfection. They are places to investigate ideas, follow instincts, and stay connected to the act of making art.

Over time, sketchbooks show the shape of a practice. They reveal what the artist returned to, what felt worth pursuing, and how ideas developed across time.

The value isn’t in any one page, but in the consistency of working things out, again and again. Letting ideas percolate. Having a place to come back to. A safekeeping place for ideas and half-formed fragments of ideas.

Exhibition details

Helen Wells, Sketchbooks with Soul: Process, Play & Practice

Tuesday, January 20–Friday, April 17 2026

Hours: 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Visit at: Carol Grillo Gallery, Walter J. Manninen Center for the Arts, Endicott College,

406 Hale Street, Beverly, MA 01915.

If you have any questions about visiting, the gallery director’s email is thansen@edicott.edu