A love letter to sketchbooks

There’s no one right way to do anything, and that includes keeping a sketchbook.

My sketchbooks feel like a motley gang of unruly but beloved friends, each one different, with its own quirks and oddities. And that’s exactly why I love them, not in spite of their weirdness, but because of it.

You know that saying about friends: “They come into your life for a season, a reason, or a lifetime”?

I think it applies to art-making and sketchbooks too. I look back at certain sketchbooks and remember those seasons of life so vividly, times when a sketchbook was an escape from life’s upheaval, a place of quiet creativity or times when it was simply a place of carefree art adventure.

Sketchbooks: A powerful creative tool

A sketchbook can be one of the most powerful creative tools an artist possesses.

For me, they’ve been life-changing. They’ve helped me move from hesitation to confidence, from creative uncertainty to finding my artistic voice. My sketchbooks have been a springboard into a more colorful and creative life. If you’ve ever considered keeping a sketchbook, here are a few reasons why you may like to start or re-start.

Making art for yourself

There is something deeply nourishing about making art just for yourself. Experimenting in a sketchbook can lift the spirits and bring immense joy. The simple act of transforming a blank page into something alive with meaning, color, and line is rewarding in itself. A sketchbook is a private place where we can have a creative conversation with ourselves. For me, it has been where I have learnt to be less critical and judgemental of myself and my art.

So many pages, so many opportunities, so much possibility has helped me loosen my attachment to how any one thing turns out…it just doesn’t matter.

A place to begin

Sketchbooks are where we find out about our own art sensibilities, not where we show up fully formed. They are part of the journey, not the final destination.

When we start working in a sketchbook, it helps to embrace a beginner’s mindset—to stay open, curious, and willing to explore. It’s okay to make mistakes, things that haven’t worked teach us something. We don’t need to expect too much from ourselves. I love this idea from Vincent Van Gogh:

“I am always doing what I can’t do yet, in order to learn how to do it.”

A place to learn and grow

In a world obsessed with outcomes, a sketchbook offers a space for discovery. It allows us to explore our interests, experiment with techniques, develop and flex the ways in which we make art. A sketchbook is where we learn what excites us creatively, where we test ideas, push our boundaries, refine our process, and reflect on our evolving art practice.

A place to practice

It is called an art practice for a reason, a sketchbook is a great place to practice and track the progression of an idea, skill or approach.

A filing cabinet of ideas

A sketchbook is more than just a collection of drawings—it’s a filing cabinet for your creativity. It gathers fragments of inspiration, allowing us to flip through pages and spot recurring patterns, themes, and ideas. Over time, our sketchbooks reveal what captivates us, helping us refine our artistic identity.

Begin where you are

A sketchbook is a companion, a teacher, a playground.

It doesn’t demand perfection. It invites exploration. It reminds us that creativity is not about flawless execution but about showing up, trying and growing.

So, if you’ve ever hesitated to start a sketchbook, let this be your sign: Begin.

Fill the pages with your ideas, your experiments, your mistakes, and your joy. Let it be a space where your creativity can run wild, unfurl and be unjudged.

You never know where it might take you.

Types of sketchbook

Here are some of the sketchbooks I like, but sketchbooks are a personal preference and come in so many different shapes, sizes and varieties, the sketchbook that is right for me, may not be right for you.

The best sketchbook to use is always the one you already own.

1. The Venezia Book from Fabriano

2. Stillman & Birn, Zeta Range

3. The Ebony Artist Book from Daler Rowney

4. Dylusions Creative Journal Large from Ranger

5. Seawhite of Brighton Pocket Concertina

6. Talens Art Creation Sketchbooks

   (Some of these links are affiliate links, if you buy something through them, I might earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. I only ever share the products that I actually use. )
   

Love of Pattern

My love of decoration, ornament and pattern has been a life-long love affair.

All of my very earliest childhood memories involve pattern in some way..,the wallpaper in my infant bedroom, the pattern of a dress, a carpet, a bedspread, a plate, the decoration on our neighbour’s biscuit tin when I was only three or four. I see and remember the world via pattern.

The art we make reflects who we are back to us, doesn’t it?. It can be a projection, an extension of who we are, a culmination of our experiences, our sensibilities, our curiosities, our feelings…. And my art definitely celebrates a love of pattern.

Humans are pattern makers

I think perhaps patten also has an instinctual universal appeal too. Humans are pattern makers and pattern seekers. From the earliest times we have added ornament, decoration, motifs and marks to the items in our world, we turn the ordinary into the extraordinary through making our mark on the world. .We have always added pattern, ornamentation, decoration and detail to the items in our lives to make our lives more beautiful.

Humans are pattern seekers

We seek patterns as a way to understand the world.. there is comfort, familiarity and understanding in repetition and repeats…and at it’s most basic form that’s exactly what a pattern is. It’s a shape, a motif, a mark… repeated.

I seem to agree with the saying that ‘repetition makes perfect’…

Books and links

Here are the books I share in the video.

Terry Winters. Paintings, Drawings, Prints 1994–2004 Hardcover, 2005 by Richard Shiff (Author), Rachel Teagle (Author) Published by Yale University Press.

This book is now out of print but you can see more of Terry Winter’s art on his website here

Matisse in the Studio Hardcover – 6 April 2017 by Ellen McBreen (Author) et al, Royal Academy of the Arts

Making collages to inspire paintings

In this video I share a process I use to help me find new ideas and compositions…

CREATING COLLAGES

I make photocopies of things I’ve created, such as pages in my sketchbook, I collect together abandoned drawings, and offcuts and oddments from my art practice and I use all these pieces and fragments to create temporary collages which I then photograph.

The photographs are then used to inspire further drawings and paintings and then those drawings and paintings might be used to inspire something else…its a creative stepping stone.

A temporary collage made from old drawings, and photocopies of things I’ve created

FOLLOWING A BREADCRUMB TRAIL

Art making is often like following a breadcrumb trail through the forest to an unknown destination… I never quite know which path will lead to something magical and which will lead to a dead-end. I like the fact that making art can feel like a journey into the unknown...

A painting in my sketchbook (left) inspired by a collage made from pieces of an old magazine (right).

COLLAGES MADE FROM MAGAZINES

If you don’t have offcuts of your own art to use to create a collage, you could try with pieces cut from a magazine.

Above is a small collage I’ve created by cutting interesting bits and bobs out of a magazine.

Creating a composition from random found shapes and pieces is like constructing a puzzle… it involves lots of questioning and thought and is not always as easy as it may appear. ‘Does this look balanced? Is this interesting? Is it too busy? Is it too boring? Does it work as a unified whole? The sort of questions you need to ask when creating any art work are tested by this type of excercise. In all these experiments, I’m seeking discoveries, learnings, revelations…flexing my creative muscles.

I believe most artist’s have a seeker’s soul. Looking for fragments of ideas, trying to figure things out, attempting to join the dots, make connections, piecing things together to better understand themselves and the world around them. Trying to find out who they are as artists and how they want their art to look, feel and be in that moment…

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This mindset shift which has helped the most…

Music credit: Ludlow, Masterpiece of Mess

In this video I talk about how my art making changed dramatically when I stopped concentrating on the flaws in everything I created and started appreciating and seeking the things I loved about my own art. This change allowed me to appreciate my personal sensibilities, tune into what made my art feel like mine and improve my skills.

I love this quote from Ira Glass, the American writer and broadcaster. It is about writing but is true and applicable to all forms of creativity…

“All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple of years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer.

And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have.

We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work.

Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

IRA GLASS QUOTED IN 2009 WHEN TALKING ABOUT THE THE ART OF STORYTELLING ON CURRENT TV

This idea is true not just for beginners but for everyone who is at a point of transition, or trying something new or integrating a new process into their existing approach.

Our ambitions can be greater than our abilities and that is just part of the creative process…my advice is to keep going and keep paying close attention to what you like, enjoy and care about in your own work…

Collages made from magazines

Music credit: Don’t Give up on Love by Ludlow via Epidemic Sound

In this video I share a small creative exercise: making collages from our imagination and an old magazine.

SIMPLE BUT NOT EASY

This kind of simple art exercise or challenge is an important part of my art journey. The premise is simple but the execution is not always easy. It involves thought and problem solving and working within constraints and trying to make something from not very much…

REFINING SKILLS

Just like any other discipline, art requires practice to refine skills, to develop self awareness and expand our zones of comfort. I enjoy incorporating small challenges into my art making, whatever the outcome may be. Being relaxed about the outcome is key, I think.

HAPPY WITH AN AVERAGE OUTCOME

I’ve now learned to be happy with not always loving what I create, particularly if iI’m just exploring or doing exercises.

I know that making average stuff is just part of art making. It’s actually a really important part…. It has taken me a long time to understand this though.

I used to think that everything I created must look lovely. That if I created something ugly it meant I wasn’t a good enough artist. I was insecure in my own abilities and wanted my work to somehow prove to myself that I was indeed good enough. This desire for perfection did not help me make better art, it added a weight of expectation and too much pressure. It just caused me unneccessary suffering along the way and a feeling of stuck-ness.

Putting too much significance on the outcome and wanting something to look good meant I became stuck doing the things I knew I could do. It meant that the joy of art making was always wedded to the outcome. It also meant that I didn’t allow myself to take any risks or push myself. Now I fully accept that not everything I create will work out how I want it to and actually if it always does I’m probably playing it too safe. Ofcourse I still want to make beautiful art that feels good to me, but I believe that creating art that I really love comes from creating lots of art, sometimes successful and sometimes not so much….

Mixing art supplies

Today I’m chatting about mixing media and combining art supplies…

CONNECTION WITH THE MATERIALS

There is something about the physicality of creating art which I love, the connection to the art materials is part of the joy. I try and choose my art materials with intention, they influence and inform what I make. I relish the sensory and tactile nature of mixing the paint, touching the materials, how the paper feels, the physical connection to what is on the page. I enjoy leaving my mark on the page, the evidence of the physical act of art making is an integral part of my art…

UNEXPECTED DELIGHTS

There is real delight to be found in mixing different types of media and art supplies on one page, the visual variety, the different sensibilities of different art materials combing to create something surprising, interesting or unexpected.

INSPIRED BY THE PROCESS

When making art in a sketchbook, the outcome is not so important, this allows a certain amount of freedom to explore different processes, materials and combinations of materials. The magical element is often what is discovered about the way materials can be manipulated, how they play together...

Abstract art and art books…

In this video I share a little of what I am up to in my art practice at the moment, painting on paper, the art books I’m currently reading and loving and a few recent adventures within my sketchbook…

Sold out

Original Painting on Paper: A Vibrant Life One

ART BOOKS: John Walker, The Blue Series, Messums Art Gallery, Catalogue, published in 2023

David Mankin, Remembering in Paint by Kate Reeve Edwards, published by Samson & Company 2021

MUSIC CREDIT: If I wrote you a song, by Melanie Bell vie Epidemic Sound

My story

I became an artist a little later in life, in my late thirties. I didn’t go to art collage and gave up studying art when I was just seventeen. My route to becoming a full time artist has been a rather circuitous one. I didn’t create anything at all in my twenties, then spent my thirties obsessed with art, but only ever as a hobby. It wasn’t until my forties that art slowly evolved to become my full time career.

As a child, I was always drawing. I dreamed of being a textile designer. I loved spending hours creating elaborate and intricate patterns from my imagination. I used to get through so much paper that my father started to buy me large rolls of wallpaper lining-paper to keep up with my insatiable demand for something to draw on.

Recent artwork

Recent art work

Drawing from 40 years ago

My Mum was studying contemporary textiles when I was little, so she was always sewing or taking me to the haberdashery. Thread, fabric, colour, pattern were the back-drop to my childhood. I have always been fascinated by pattern and colour

But then at seventeen when a school time-tabling clash wouldn’t allow me to study art with my other subjects, I gave up studying art and I gave up creating art and I allowed it to just slip out of my life.

A little bit of heartbreak brought me back to art making. A relationship breakup when I was 28 or 29 left me moping around with no summer holiday plans. I decided to book myself onto a two week painting summer school at a London art college. It was there that I started a much more fulfilling love affair… I fell completely and utterly in love with drawing and painting.

For nearly all of my thirties art was a hobby, I tried to go to art collage and was rejected after a terrible interview, so I just thought that creating art would remain a life enhancing, life enriching hobby.

In my late thirties as I climbed the career ladder at the charity I had worked at for for nearly a decade, I began to feel that perhaps I had laid my ladder against the wrong wall.

I had a clear epiphany out of the blue one day, that I really did want to make art a more significant part of my life… so I set about trying to make art my career.

I took tiny steps in the right direction. I started to try and sell my art online. I entered competitions and group shows and slowly and surely things started to happen. I won a Winsor & Newton watercolour competition which meant my art was displayed at The Saatchi Gallery in London. Eight of my paintings were displayed at one of Gordon Ramsay’s restaurants… I build my confidence, learnt new skills and made art my part time career and then eventually my full time career.

Recent sketchbook pages

Recent sketchbook pages

I’ve now patch-worked an art career together through trial and error, finding out what works and what I enjoy. I love the career I have built. I license my work for wall art, branding and products. I sell my original paintings and complete commissions for original art projects such as for hospitals. I have written a book about mixed media sketchbooks and I teach online classes.

Art inspirations and fascinations

Creating art is a process of unpacking the things in life which fascinate; a wonderful way to explore obsessions and better understand curiosities. Creativity is a process of discovery and exploration.

By making art, I have discovered more about my self and the world I inhabit.

It has encouraged me to meet myself on the page, to become clearer on what moves me, motivates me, interests me and lights me up.  To follow the threads of my curiosity and weave them together. 

EXTERNAL WORLD

The process of creating art has ignited multiple and diverse love affairs for ancient textiles, seaweed, fossils, found patterns, painted ceramics, trees roots, sacred geometry, weeds, patterned rugs, reflections on water, hand embroidery, folk art, iridescence....

It has connected me to tthe world around me in a tangible life-enriching way. I notice more of what I am curious and fascinated by.

INTERNAL WORLD

It has also prompted me to tune-in to my own sensibilities. Why do I create art in the way that I do? What is my art about? I would say my art is about delightful details, beauty in the mundane, seeking and finding, layers of complexity, reveling in colour, fragments of wonder and awe, exuberance and control, moments of joy, combinations and juxtapositions, threads through time…

I want my art to feel expressive, joyful, combine exuberance with quietness, be bright, playful, interesting, complex.This is also how I want my life to feel, what excites me in my art is what I seek in my life and what I seek in my art is what excites me in life..

Abstract art and art books

MUSIC CREDIT: If i wrote you a song, by Melanie Bell via Epidemic Sound

In this video I share a little of what I am up to in my art practice at the moment, painting on paper, the art books I’m currently reading and loving and a few recent adventures within my sketchbook…

ART BOOKS:

John Walker, The Blue Series, Messums Art Gallery, Catalogue, published in 2023

David Mankin, Remembering in Paint by Kate Reeve Edwards, published by Samson & Company 2021

My favorite types of sketchbook

WHY I LOVE SKETCHBOOKS

Sketchbooks are a place where I make art for myself. The pages are not necessarily filled with ‘sketches,’ the art is not necessarily a draft for something more important, although it can be, I think of my sketchbooks as a place where I experiment and express myself. Sketchbooks are where I gather together the hints, whispers and clues of my artistic practice. Sketchbooks are the filing cabinets for my art making. They are a place to collect and curate small delights and large curiosities. They are a place to make for the joy of creating, a place to find a path through, problem solve, follow a thread. They are both a homecoming and an adventure…

FILLING UP A SKETCHBOOK

I used to abandon sketchbooks after a few pages. Now I try to always fill them up, I’ve found that the more art is in a book the more inspiring I find it to work in, it gains a momentum, I often prefer what I’ve made in the second half of the book. There is something about a full sketchbook that gives me pride, the fact I am able to keep going and fill one up, it feels like an achievement.

I still find the first few pages of a sketchbook to be a little daunting though, sometimes I don’t even start on the first page, but rather I start a few pages in and circle back to fill in those first few pages when the sketchbook has found its footing…and I’m feeling more assured.

MY FAVOURITE TYPES OF SKETCHBOOK

Here are the types of sketchbook I use the most, these are just my personal preferences, the ones I like to use or buy.

1. VENEZIA BOOK FROM FABRIANO

I use different sketchbooks for different things and tend to have more than one on the go at once. For my main studio sketchbook I use a Venezia Book from Fabriano, it is my favourite. I like the paper which is 200gsm or 90lbs in weight, I use the version that is 23cm x 30 cm `which lays flat. It’s a good size for me and can take quite a lot of collage material and wet paint.

2. STILLMAN & BIRN ZETA RANGE

I buy the square version of this sketchbook which has beautiful smooth 270gsm paper and is 19cm x 19cm.

3. POCKET SIZE CONCERTINA SKETCHBOOK FROM SEAWHITE OF BRIGHTON

This is an accordion or concertina sketchbook made from long folded pieces of paper. These are small, portable and quick to fill as they are only 17.5cm x 9cm. The paper isn’t that thick but because the book is constructed from two long sheets of paper joined together it feels thicker than its 140gsm paper weight. It comes with a hard carrying case and I find it great for working outside or carrying about in my bag. It has two long pieces of paper, folded into pages and I enjoy working across these expanded surfaces and folding the pages in and out to see what I have created with new eyes.

4.DALER ROWNEY A3 ARTIST’S HARD BACK SKETCHBOOK

These hard backed sketchbooks are really large, it’s an A3 size which means a double page spread is A2. The paper is smooth acid free 160gsm and it contains 48 sheets or 48 double page spreads.

5. HANDMADE AND HOMEMADE ART BOOKS

As part of my overall sketchbook practice I love making all sorts of quick handmade, small art books and sketchbooks. I often make them from offcuts and oddments and abandoned and unloved pages and scrap paper and they become something new and interesting. To me a small homespun sketchbook feels quite liberating and joyful to create in. The stakes are low and so I perhaps create with less weight of expectation and more experimentation…