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.