Messing about in my sketchbook

And my love of Paul Klee

Music credit: Hand me a Guitar by Isobelle Walton via Epidemic Sound

Looking closely

In this video, I try to unpick a little of the magic in the work of German-Swiss artist Paul Klee by looking closely at one of his artworks and using the memory of it to inspire a sketchbook spread of my own.

Klee was the first artist I fell in love with. I think I was maybe 16 when I saw an exhibition of his in London… and I have loved his work ever since.

Creative alchemy

Klee’s Bauhaus studio was once brilliantly described as a “wizard’s kitchen” by a colleague of his, a space full of experiments, creative alchemy and artistic invention. It’s a great description that captures something essential about Klee’s approach to art making: playful, inventive, curious and perhaps a little magical.

He described his creative process as serious play, part science, part mystery. Klee believed that art should unfold like nature: transforming, evolving, becoming.

Respond not recreate

That’s partly why, in my own sketchbook, I’m not trying to replicate one of his pieces. I couldn’t if I tried.
Instead I’m letting the memory of looking at one of his works The Movement of Vaulted Chambers from The Met’s Collection inspire a little play.

Trying to respond rather than recreate.
Trying to let something evolve. Instead of asking “how can I copy this?” I’m asking, “what do I love about his painting?”

A new appreciation

And this excercise gave me a whole new appreciation for just how extraordinary his work is.

He makes it look effortless. 
But the more I tried to follow what I thought were perhaps “simple” moves, the more I realised how much depth and discipline sits beneath his work.

There’s boldness in his work, yes, but also incredible rigour and analytical prowess.


What looks intuitive is underpinned by precision.

There is something about this contrast of opposites, the way he balances freedom and control, boldness and precision, playfulness with discipline that I deeply admire…

A sketchbook is for discovery not perfect outcomes

I didn’t love everything about what I created in my sketchbook and I don’t mind at all.

The point of a sketchbook is to discover, not to create a perfect outcome. We practice, we learn, we try things and when they don’t quite work out, we use that knowledge to move us forward.

The value is nearly always in what was learned, not what was created.

I might revisit this page and see if I can add in a bit of the precision I found lacking or I might just leave it.

I enjoyed the process and the fact I did it, and I learned quite a lot by doing it. The end result is sort of unimportant…

Resources and info:

• The book I show is one I’ve had for thirty years, Paul Klee 1879-1940, published in 1992 by Taschen and written by Susanna Partsch.

• Paul Klee’s book about Sketchbooks is called The Pedagogical Sketchbook, which he wrote in 1925, it is still in print, published by Faber and translated by Sibyl Moholy-Nagy.

• I mentioned that I enjoy looking at art works closely using Google Arts and Culture. Here is link to a small online exhibition of Paul Klee’s work.

• The artwork by Klee I was looking at in the video is from called The Movement of Vaulted Chambers on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s website.

• The sketchbook I was using is a Venezia Book by Fabriano and the watercolour paint I was using was from Sennelier.

All my sketchbooks: evidence of showing up

Music credit: Honey and Bees by Damon Greene via EpidemicSound

Gathering

This week I gathered all my sketchbooks together, I made space for them in a single old cabinet.

They had been scattered a little randomly across my house in various different places, piled up under desks, hiding on shelves, under sofas…in boxes and cupboards.

We had a major burst water pipe in our house a few years back which upended normality, we couldn’t live in our house for many months as it dried out and was rebuilt. It meant that every single item in our home was temporarily displaced and moved around again and again. So although everything is fixed and back to normal now, there are still a few pockets of residual chaos, some things never quite found their way back to where they belong…

Evidence of showing up

My nomadic sketchbooks have now been gathered together and for the first time they are all in one place.

And my cabinet of sketchbooks is really a delight to me.

As they were all together, I laid them out across the floor of my studio. A magic carpet of sketchbooks, colourful, chaotic and full of memories.

At first glance, it might just look like a cacophony of paint and scribbles. But to me, each book is evidence. Evidence of showing up, of taking the time, making the effort and putting one mark after another. They tell the story of the fact I’ve kept going.

A record of fascinations explored

Sketchbooks are where I’ve discovered who I am as an artist and what I am fascinated by. Looking back across so many pages, I can see my artistic fascinations reappear, evolve, and sometimes turn into whole bodies of work. They are a record of curiosity, a trail of breadcrumbs back through my creative history.

The compounding of ideas

One random page on its own may not look like much. But a hundred pages? A dozen books? They add up. The time would have passed anyway, but now I have something to show for it. Ideas compound, threads gather and slowly something bigger takes shape. It’s a reminder that creativity isn’t just about single flashes of inspiration, it’s about an accumulation of experiences, an accumulation of ideas.

Momentum and joy

I think of sketchbooks as momentum made visible. That every page, the messy ones, the lovely ones…are all part of a larger story. And when I lay them all out together, I see not just what I’ve made, but the kind of artist I’ve become by simply turning up to the page, again and again.

Why it matters

For me, the magic of sketchbooks isn’t just in the finished spreads, but in what they represent: perseverance, curiosity, commitment and joy. They remind me that the work of art making is less about rushing to outcomes and more about a commitment to creativity, one small decision at a time.

If you need encouragement to keep going, let this be it: small efforts add up.

And one day, you too might find yourself standing on your own “magic carpet” of sketchbooks, seeing just how far you’ve travelled.

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.

The Venezia Book from Fabriano

Stillman & Birn, Zeta Range

The Ebony Artist Book from Daler Rowney

(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. )

PS: If reading this makes you want to spend more time in your own sketchbooks, you might enjoy my online classes. They’re all about curiosity, play, and building confidence in your art-making, one page at a time. You can explore them here:

Artist in Focus: Amy Maricle

Imperfection, wonder and the power of baby steps…

This week is an artist-to-artist conversation with American artist Amy Maricle. We swap answers to the same set of questions about our art practice, sharing what’s magical, what’s maddening and what our future self would like us to hear.

Amy’s interview is below and you can read my interview over on her website.

About Amy Maricle

Amy Maricle is an artist, art therapist and author who is fascinated by the connections between nature and art. In her classes in art journaling, painting, bookmaking, and paper cutting, she teaches students to slow down and co-create with nature, using a playful creative process to find more joy and meaning. She is the author of Draw Yourself Calm: Draw Slow, Stress Less (North Light, 2022) and her art and writing have been featured in The New York Times.com, The Times London, and The Washington Post.com among others. You can check out her website here.

If you’d like to experiment with Amy’s nature-based drawing techniques, she is offering my readers an invitation to a free slow drawing workshop.

What is magical about your art practice?

Working in layers and in series is magical for me. It frees me up to let the work evolve without pressure. I almost always make numerous versions of the same thing, ‘what if…’ questions fueling endless iterations, and helping me to find my best work without the pressure of perfectionism.

On a recent trip to Greece, I noticed the dangling, parasol-like bloom of the aloe plant. Using small pieces of watercolor paper, I joyfully drew and painted many versions of it. I now have a 3 x 3 inch pop-up book where large blooms lift off the page and obscure little treasures, and the tiniest little aloe bloom hides beneath green misty doors. There’s a sense of intimacy and curiosity with pop-up books and small-scale art. I try to recapture the wonder we felt in childhood, but with an adult’s sensibilities.

Nature-based art feels magical to me. I ask questions like: How can I extrapolate a pattern from the whorl in my dog’s fur, or from the foam swirling on the river? When I reduce these patterns to their most basic elements, are they the same? What else in nature fits this structure? These questions fascinate me.

What is boring and frustrating about your art practice?

I hate measuring. In order to make journals and sketchbooks, you need to measure, and since I do it seasonally, not consistently, I don’t get into a rhythm with it. Each time I return to journal making, there is inevitably at least one mistake that I have to correct, and that is indeed boring and frustrating at times. With book making, I’ve had to learn the value of undoing and redoing stitches on a coptic bound journal, or re-cutting a set of accordion fold pages that land short, askew, or with a cut that went wrong. It’s worth it to make it right, because the journal is the foundation upon which my drawings, paintings, and paper-cuts sit, so I want to honor them.

Several years ago, I wouldn’t have had patience for this. I would have said, “Aw, it’s good enough,” but felt annoyed and discouraged. For me with art, there’s a funny balance between embracing imperfection to keep momentum and spontaneity, but also bringing my analytic mind to improve the work. It’s a dance that I enjoy and teach my students too.

Making my own journals gives me a feeling of self-sufficiency, and creative power, moreso because it doesn’t come easy to me. The patience for painstaking tasks has only come to me after learning to practice slow art.

What does your inner voice say on a good day?

My inner critic is really loud in some other areas of my life, but thankfully, with age this self-doubt has softened. I’m not sure what my inner voice has to say about my art. With art, occasionally of course I feel on stage, or worry I won’t measure up in some way. But mostly I’ve put myself in a position to be in my own lane, my own line of inquiry where I get to investigate what interests me artistically and follow it as far as time and energy allow. I guess I put blinders on to some degree, and shield my work from people who I know don’t care for it, so that the inner critic stays calm and unworried. I also think I have the advantage of positive reinforcement from my students. It’s encouraging when so many people want to learn from you. It makes you feel that you must be doing something right. I try to practice the dance between playful art and carefully crafted art. So it’s a blend of practicing and learning skills, and letting the ideas run wild and take me in new directions. So I guess the voice is mostly just curious and excited. She says, “Hey, what if we did this? Ooh, wouldn’t that be cool? What if we did that? That would be interesting too!”

What does your inner voice say on a bad day?

If I think about the few times I can recall a negative inner voice with my art - I remember once on a retreat with a lovely group of women - one of the less experienced students made a critical comment while I was demonstrating blind contour drawing. I had just finished saying that you can let things be loose and not the best to start, and she said something about how it was indeed not the best. 😂 Naturally, since I was demonstrating to a class, I felt a bit embarrassed and for a moment I questioned whether my art wasn’t good enough. But I also immediately recognized that this was the voice of a scared inner critic. She was letting me know she needed permission to screw up too.

When I was young I loved singing and theatre. My favorite director had invited me to perform as the only high school student with his troupe of college actors. When I arrived to perform my monologue for the other students for the first time, he smartly realized that I might feel pressure to be good. The invitation he gave me was a powerful one that I never forgot. He said, “I want you to screw up right now as much as possible.” I try to live out that advice of working out the kinks, working towards my best, but giving myself space to figure it out imperfectly.

What’s a small thing that delights you?

There are so many small things that bring me joy: Writing and scribbling in a big journal and the big ideas that arrive there. The sound of paper. A good fountain pen. Playing with hand lettering. Painting a simple, beautiful mark again and again. Looking long and deeply at plants, mosses, and tide pools. The way nature’s patterns repeat across species, down to the cell level and into the stars. Carrying a small journal and a pen so I can capture inspiration and draw any time. The way watercolor pigment moves on wet cotton paper.

What’s a big thing that scares you?

When my body doesn’t want to cooperate with my plans due to aches and pains I get scared. I love to go run, bike, hike, and lift. I once heard someone say, “Our bodies are incredible machines - it’s like we all have a lamborghini sitting in the garage. I want to take it out for a spin and see what it can do.” I love that.

What would your 12 year-old-self have to say about the way you are living your life?

I felt compelled to create a dialogue between me and my younger self::

Young Amy: Whoa! You are an artist? How do you have patience to do all those tiny, teeny drawings? They must take forever! I would hate that. How did you get to enjoy that?

Amy Now: I know, it’s crazy right? Who would have thought I’d learn the patience to do something so meticulous? Part of the secret is that I don’t plan it out. Just like when you draw mandalas, or make patterns on your sneakers with puffy paint, I let it evolve naturally, making a mark here and a mark there. With tiny marks, you build up patience over time, especially by drawing and painting slowly. Now I have the patience to do things I couldn’t before, like sew, or push myself to make my watercolor paintings look the way I want. It’s all about doing things in baby steps. That’s how you’ll do it too.

Young Amy: Your art is so cool, I mean my art is so cool! Ha! So, you own your own business? Do you have to deal with numbers and things? I would hate that.

Amy Now: That definitely scared me at first. But just like in the Delaware River on that tubing trip when you had to dig your feet into the riverbed as the current threatened to carry you off, I found some tools and people to support me, and I learned I’m capable of much more than I thought. Being a business owner is an evolving process. I’m learning all the time, and I even enjoy parts of it tremendously. Serving others is an amazing gift, and I know how much that matters to you, you’ve got this.

What would your 85 year-old-self have to say about the way you are living your life?

I’m surprised, but I really don’t know how to answer this one. I think she might say:

Make sure you make enough time for slow, deep art, and writing.

Put that stupid phone down.

Do one thing at a time.

Make the art.

Keep kicking ass.

If you’d like to experiment with Amy’s nature-based drawings, she is offering my readers an invitation to a free slow drawing workshop.

A creative refuel

Summer always feels like a time of year when I need to refill and refuel my creativity.

A time to replenish my sense of wonder. A time to be more introspective and less productive. Our creativity can by cyclical and right now, mine is calling for spaciousness, for slowness.

In this season I try and respect this natural rhythm of mine and do things which nourish and nurture my creativity. My creative re-fuelling usually involves some mix of:

Writing and reflecting

Journaling helps me untangle thoughts and tune back in. It’s where I listen to myself. I write about what I’m drawn to, what feels exciting, what I want more of, what I want to leave behind. I ask questions I don’t always have the answers to.

Reading

When I feel creatively tired, reading feels like a nourishing reset. I often turn to books about art or creativity, or stories that take me somewhere unexpected. Sometimes reading about how others see the world helps me better understand how I see it too.

Looking at art

Visiting galleries, paging through art books, sitting with a painting in real life, all of it feeds something in me. Just looking, noticing, feeling what stirs and connects.

Learning

I take classes often, because I love to be reminded that there are always new ways to see and new things to try. I love how even one new idea or tool can unlock something unexpected. It’s often less about mastering a technique and more about opening a new door.

Time in nature and walking in new places

A slow walk, for me is often a return to wonder.. Letting myself follow what I notice: the shape of a shadow, the texture of a wall, a tangle of leaves. Just letting myself be surprised. Letting myself be fed by the beauty of the natural world.

Playing about

Some days I get out materials and just play. No plan, no pressure. I remind myself that this doesn’t have to be anything. It doesn’t have to lead to anything. It can just feel good. It can just be weird and messy and mine. And paradoxically ithis energy and attitude does often lead me somewhere interesting.

More drawing as exploring

Drawing slows me down. It helps me pay attention to the page, to the world, to myself. It’s a way of discovering, embedding an experience in your psyche, connecting head, hand and heart…

So this summer, I’ll be making space for nature, for noticing, for reading, for writing, for playing with art materials with no expectations. I’m not following a plan. I’m letting curiosity be the compass. Letting what feels nourishing and delightful gently guide me in the right direction…

Materials

In this video I was drawing on the beach using two types of pencil:

Faber Castell Pitt Pencil Matt Graphite Pencil 14B

Staedtler Mars Lumograph Pencil 9B

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.

Let Nature Lead Your Art…

If you’re in need of a little creative refuelling and would like to make art inspired by nature, take a look at Nature and Nurture. This gentle, self-paced course invites you to explore natural forms, playful drawing, and semi-abstract mixed media, all rooted in the beauty of organic shapes, plants, and flowers.

“Each video causes me to think! As ever, your classes cheer me up and inspire me.” Janice

Available now for £48.

Giving ideas space and time

This is a love letter to slowness, open spaces and trusting our internal rhythms.

I naturally lean toward pace and productivity, hard work, maximum effort, ticking boxes, getting stuff done.

For years, I chased down life. Chased down ideas. I felt a constant pressure, self-imposed, mostly, to do more, move faster… to perhaps outrun self-doubt with high output.

I was never good at resting, or giving myself or my creativity time to breathe.

But in recent years, I’ve had to do things very differently. And I have learned to see things very differently too.

A stretch of ill health gave me no choice but to slow down. To rest. To stop pushing. To sit in the stillness I would’ve once rushed right past or filled right up.

And in that slowing down, I can now see just how unhelpful and unhealthy my old pace was.

Some of the best, most interesting creative moments? They don’t arrive when they’re being chased. They arrive when they’re being gently coaxed and given space to unfurl. They sneak up when I’m doing not much. When I’m sitting quietly, letting my thoughts drift with no goal, no plan. When I’m messing about in my sketchbook with no expectation of outcome. When I’m playing with art supplies and paper with no ambition of producing something important. That’s when ideas start to arrive, to call to me, to surprise me.

But giving yourself that kind of space is hard. It can feel wrong, lazy and unproductive.

We’ve been taught to chase the result, to be productive at all costs. But honestly?

I now realise that ideas often appear when we stop trying so hard. I’ve learned that good ideas rarely arrive on demand. They need room. They need time. They need the kind of space that we often rush to fill.

There’s a concept in Gestalt therapy I love and have mentioned before called the fertile void. It’s the space between things. The gap before the next step. And it can be rich, potent, wildly creative. Not because you're doing more, but because you're doing less. Trusting more. Forcing less.

There’s a reason we say, “let it percolate.” Real creativity isn’t a sprint. It’s more like a long, weird, wonderful conversation. You can’t always force it, or even see it happening.

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t. I used to panic in those quieter stretches when nothing seemed to be happening. Now, I try to make room for them, welcome them, positively embrace them.

Because not every season is meant for high output. Some are for wandering. Some are for wondering. And some are just... for waiting. Not every idea needs action right away. Some just need to be held. Noticed. Listened to. Kindled and coaxed. Allowed to percolate…

The book I show in the video is Folkish by Victionary Press, Hong Kong published May 2025.

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. )

Keep reading…

Art inspiration is everywhere…

Music credit: Supine, Peter Sandberg

This week, I walked to the train station. Nothing remarkable. Just the usual fifteen-minute route through the centre of town. But instead of rushing I slowed down. On purpose.

I set myself a small task: Notice what catches your eye. Not the big, obvious things, but the tiny, hidden interesting shapes and patterns, motifs and moments.

I paid attention to the shadows cast by railings. The silhouette of a plants against a clear sky. Stripes of fencing, angular and imperfect.

Noticing became a kind of tuning fork, helping me tune back into my own visual sensitivities. That part of me that’s sensitive to shape and pattern. Line and contrast. Colour and texture.

I paused often.

Not to capture the perfect photo, to simply notice. And as I looked, I found more.

More shapes. More visual whispers that I’d perhaps normally pass by.

It reminded me that inspiration doesn’t shout. It waits for us to seek it out, to pay close attention, to slow down enough to notice it…

This kind of wandering and wondering is one of the easiest creative practices I know. A way to gather and reflect. Because inspiration doesn’t always come from grand views or planned studio time.

Sometimes it starts in the space between errands, on a Friday morning. Walking through the centre of town, looking and really seeing.

If you try it, you might be surprised by what reveals itself.

Materials

Here are some of the materials I was using in this video:

• The paper I am using is mostly Academia Paper from Fabriano

• The large A3 sketchbook is from a British brand called Daler Rowney

• The small sketchbook is a Venezia Book from Fabriano

• The black brush pen I am using is a Pentel pen similar to this one

• The glue I am using was Liquitex Matt Gel Medium

  (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. )
  

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