2025 has unfolded slowly for me. I’ve been poorly with something resembling flu and have spent much of this new year in my pyjamas coughing …

I have done little in life or art, but now I am feeling a bit stronger I have spent some low-key, quiet time meandering in my sketchbook.

Playing with some simple drawing materials… Expecting very little of myself, creating as a lovely distraction. Manufacturing small moments of joy, just as a nice thing to do. Creating for the sake of creating, not for any outcome, just for the experience of doing it.

It has made me think about the healing nature of creativity and how beneficial my sketchbook practice has been to me through difficult passages of life.

The last five years have presented a small rollercoaster of personal challenges, as I’m sure they have for many. I’ve had some on-going chronic health issues, my mother died after being ill for many years and we had a house flood which meant we had to re-build the bottom floors of our home whilst living in a hotel for many months… and through it all my sketchbook practice has felt like an anchor, it has been a wonderful balm for my soul and a comforting creative place to go.

Creating in my sketchbook has felt restorative, enriching and up-lifting, sometimes fun, sometimes a necessary source of calm and distraction. A small place to go and be creative. A place where I can just do a little, or sometimes a lot. Sometimes a place to rest and refuel, sometimes a place to wonder and be wild.

When life seems to derail our creativity, and when things happen that dampen our natural desire to create … it is perhaps in exactly these moments of life that creativity can be important.

In times of difficulty, small creative moments are perhaps more crucial, they can provide hope, light and encouragement. When we create art we are reminded of valuable lessons which are also needed for life. Our whole life is a creative act, which requires courage, problem solving, tenacity, a sense of adventure and optimism. And when we make art we remind ourselves of our ability take a blank page and make it into something meaningful.

A creative practice can be life-enriching and supportive, whatever is happening…

My sketchbook has been both a refuge and an escape. Using a sketchbook has provided a nourishing playground, a sanctuary and a safe harbour when waters have been choppy. It has been a place to ground both myself and my art.

My sketchbook practice has been so valuable to me only because my expectations are so low.

The stakes are low. It is a place for me to create for the joy of creating, a place to create art for the sake of creating art. A place to make anything I want to make. A place where the activity is perhaps important than the outcome. Scribbling and mark making is sometimes enough.

A sketchbook is personal. Your sketchbook, your rules. It’s a place to primarily make art for yourself, to let your interests and style iterate and unfold, it’s not about displaying art, getting approval or finished and finessed works, it’s a place to work things through, figure things out and have a creative conversation with yourself. Or just to play about with materials, to colour-in, because that is what you need in that moment.

Whatever is happening in our lives, creativity can support us in small and large ways.

Creativity is an important way to express ourselves, connect with ourselves, understand ourselves, a way to cope, a way to find hope, a way to meditate, think, feel, process and reflect.

Ultimately making art is a way to come home to ourselves…

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Mixed Media Sketchbook Tour

The Ebbs and Flows of Creativity

Artist’s Sketchbooks