Please don't take your sketchbook so seriously ☹️

12 Jul

Some of the painting sketchbooks I started from different brands!

Please don’t take your sketchbook so seriously ☹️

It breaks my heart when someone writes me saying they are unable to paint or draw in their sketchbook because they have the fear that the painting will be ugly or that they won’t be able to paint it again later in a bigger format, or that it will forever stay inside the sketchbook and they won’t be able to frame it if they like it, etc.

First of all, pause ⏸️

And come to the present moment. Yes. Come back to the moment right now.

Visualize yourself sitting at your <kitchen / living room / studio> table with your sketchbook open in front of you. You look around and also see some art supplies next to you, maybe they’re colourful and you have different art supplies, or maybe they’re monochromatic and you like to use only one kind of paint. No matter how, you are there because you enjoy these creative moments, maybe it’s the textures, maybe it’s the finished paintings themselves, maybe it’s drawing from a reference photo, maybe it’s just playing with colours. No matter what, you are here because you are creative and today you showed bravery by facing the blank page.

When those fearful thoughts come to mind, the first thing you’re doing while using your sketchbook is imagining what it will become in the future. I don’t think we need to worry about the future while we’re about to have some creative time for ourselves, don't you think?

But promptly another question comes to my mind.. when did we start to caring only about what is visually beautiful? What about what is beautiful in our memories? What about what felt good on our skin? I get it, everyone wants a beautiful sketchbook with pages that represent the beautiful places or things we see. Maybe what you see on the page is not the most beautiful thing in the world for your taste, but what about the things you remember that happened that day? Maybe you passed an awesome “me time” by painting after a full week of hard work, maybe you loved how the summer light breeze of that plein air session felt on your skin.

But the painting is “ugly”… and our brain keeps reminding us of that because we made it believe that this moment was specifically meant to paint this beautiful view or object …

But maybe that’s the lesson

Perhaps this moment was not targeted for just painting the view, but targeted to have a break from work… or to have a good time meeting other plein air painters.. or to spend time alone listening to your favorite music while drawing.

I understand that this may sound a bit too optimistic but I’ve also been there and there are some things that are hard to believe, specially at the beginning of the journey.

But I promise you, with time, you’ll learn to appreciate your initial paintings: your first experiments with a specific pen, your first time sketching and painting your favourite flower or the first time you painted in your favourite place, even if they do not look perfect at first sight.

You just need to believe in yourself and keep creating.

And in the meantime, you can support yourself on the creative community around you, that most probably than not, experienced this same hardness than you’re experiencing right now.

Always remember this:

A sketchbook is just paper, glue, and a cover.

And to encourage you a little bit to believe this, I’ll leave you here some of the best and worst pages of my sketchbooks, I hope you enjoy all of them: ugly and beautiful !