I’ve been thinking about my sketchbooks tonight.
I’m trying to get back into using them, but I’ve come to a rather strange realisation. I think I’ve spent so long trying to create perfect pages that I’ve forgotten how to use a sketchbook as, well, a sketchbook.
I see so many artists sharing their sketchbooks online. Some are filled with beautiful paintings, others with little experiments, colour studies, drawings, scribbles and all sorts of wonderful things. Everyone seems to have their own way of doing things.
And there’s me, looking at everyone else’s sketchbooks and wondering how I’m supposed to use mine.
But that’s part of the problem, isn’t it? I’m looking at what everyone else is doing instead of discovering what works for me.
Somewhere along the way, my sketchbook became another place where I felt I had to produce finished artwork. Every page had to be beautiful enough to remove, frame and potentially sell.
Which is a bit ridiculous when I think about it. I’m supposed to be experimenting, yet I’m already thinking about whether someone would buy it before I’ve even put paint on the paper.
Not that I’m selling much at the moment. Although I have sold a few paintings, so perhaps that possibility is always sitting somewhere in the back of my mind.
I’ve even removed pages from sketchbooks because I didn’t like them. I wanted a particular sketchbook to follow a certain theme, and if something didn’t fit, out it came.
But can I actually stick to one theme?
I seem to jump between so many different ideas. One minute I’m interested in landscapes, the next something abstract, then something completely different catches my attention.
Sometimes I wonder whether my brain is even capable of sticking to one thing long enough to fill an entire sketchbook.
And that brings me to another question.
If my sketchbooks are always going to be this uneven, muddled collection of ideas, how am I supposed to develop any continuity in my artwork?
How do I find my own artistic style if I’m constantly changing direction?
But perhaps I’ve been looking at it the wrong way.
Maybe continuity doesn’t have to mean painting the same subject over and over again. Maybe it’s something that develops naturally through the colours I choose, the marks I make, the things that interest me and the way I interpret what I see.
Perhaps the connection between all those different ideas is simply me.
I quite like that thought.
I’ve also realised that I’ve been treating my sketchbook almost like a portfolio. As though every page needs to prove that I’m a proper artist.
And that’s a lot of pressure to put on a little book full of paper.
A sketchbook should surely be somewhere I can make mistakes, try something completely ridiculous, abandon an idea halfway through or discover something unexpected.
It shouldn’t matter if the pages don’t match.
It shouldn’t matter if something looks awful.
And it certainly shouldn’t matter whether I could put a frame around it and stick a price tag on it.
Yet knowing all of that and actually allowing myself to work that way are two very different things.
Because right now, as I’m writing this, I’m sitting looking at a completely blank sketchbook page.
And I still don’t know what to put on it.
Maybe that’s where I need to start.
Not with a theme, a plan or another collection of perfect little paintings.
Just one mark on the page.
And perhaps, for once, I’ll leave it there even if I don’t like it.