What a sketchbook practice has given me

I’ve been thinking about what my sketchbook practice has brought to my life and beyond the actual pages… here I share some reflections:

A home for my creativity

I didn’t create anything in my twenties. In my thirties, as I slowly started to come back to my creative self, I didn't know how to navigate it.

I wasn’t quite sure where that artistic part of me belonged. For a long time it didn't seem to have anywhere to call home. Then I started using a sketchbook.

My relationship with a sketchbook started off tentatively and tumultuously. But over time, my sketchbook practice has begun to feel like the home ground for my creative self. It’s the foundations and it’s the roof. Somewhere I can house my thoughts and somewhere I can come back to.

A way to care less about the outcome

When I first started using a sketchbook, I believed that whatever I put on the page reflected my ability. So if it wasn’t good, that meant something.

I expected every page to prove something straight away. I don’t have those early sketchbooks anymore. I threw most of them away.

At the time, that felt completely reasonable.

There was a timidity in how I worked in them. The hesitation. The precision. The self-doubt. The judgement. The weight of expectation. Keeping things small, safe, neat. Stopping halfway through when it didn’t seem to be going well. Abandoning the pursuit. Abandoning my creative hopes.

If everything has to be good, you don’t try new things, you don’t experiment. You stay with what you already know you can do.

And that becomes quite limiting, quite quickly. A creative cage really.

I didn’t just decide to care less and be more experimental. I practiced it, page after page, until it started to become true.

A place to practice and spot patterns

Eventually I stopped expecting the pages to prove anything. I just used them. I welcomed whatever arrived.

I enjoyed practising techniques, but more than that, I enjoyed noticing my own creative patterns. Noticing the bits I loved in my own work. What I repeated. Specific marks. Unusual colour preferences. Small details that delighted me.

Finding my own way of making

I wouldn’t have been able to describe my “style” in those early days.

But when I look back through the older sketchbooks that I did keep, I can see it emerging.

Certain shapes appearing again and again. A kind of repetitive mark-making. A fascination with natural forms and ceramics. Jugs, leaves, patterns, spots, lines, high value contrast, bold shapes, repeition. I love being able to track the journey of my fascinations through the pages of my sketchbooks.

A container for creative clues

The compounding effect of a sketchbook practice is so helpful. You can see hundreds of pages of practice in one place. A full sketchbook is a container for so many creative clues and whispers. My sketchbooks are such a valuable hunting ground for new ideas, I just go back and see what I notice, all that art of mine, all those pages help to nourish my current and future work.

An anchor

There have been stretches of life that have felt difficult and unsettled.

During those times, my sketchbook has been an excellent escape route, a place to retreat to, a small corner for creativity, an art filled anchor.

Sometimes it is just wonderful to step away from real life for while and make something small. A little colourful world of my own.

Confidence

My sketchbooks have boosted my creative confidence. Page after page you learn that no one page really matters. We call it an art practice for a reason. I’ve found growing ease with beginning, with making a mess, with seeing what happens. Ideas develop in motion. A willingness to let a page be what it is and to understand that creativity has days when everything works and days when nothing works. A sketchbook has taught me the act of returning the next day without making it into something bigger than it is.

A nice time

Sometimes a sketchbook is just about having a nice time. Connecting head, hand and heart, A page, a few lines, a bit of colour. Just creating for the joy of it.