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Sketchbooks always felt like a trap, but I filled my first one this week
For years I bought those nice bound sketchbooks and then froze up, every page had to be a masterpiece so I just drew on loose printer paper instead. Then in March I started a daily 10 minute warmup thing where I only use the left side of the page and do ugly quick studies, hands, birds, my own coffee cup. I told myself it was just for practice and I could throw it away after. Somehow that took the pressure off and I ended up with 96 pages of messy but honest drawings, and this week I actually filled the last page. It's not gallery stuff by any means, but flipping through it feels like a diary of learning instead of a highlight reel. Has anyone else gotten over the blank page fear by intentionally making bad art in a nice book, or is that just my weird hangup?
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alicec861mo ago
The blank page fear is so real and you are not alone in it at all. I have a shelf of pretty notebooks I bought years ago and could not touch because every page felt too important to mess up. Doing bad quick drawings on purpose is such a smart way around that, and 96 pages of messy hands and coffee cups sounds way more useful than a book full of perfect finished pieces. Making it a daily warmup with a time limit probably helped too, since you stop caring once the clock is running. Flipping through it and seeing it as a diary of learning instead of a highlight reel is a really nice way to put it.
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