how i managed to finally finish a sketchbook
I’m joking. Don’t worry. A terrible mix of anxiety, procastination, perfectionism (especially towards things i care about) has always made it LITERALLY impossible to finish a sketchbook. And you know everyone says “practice practice practice” and it’s 100% true but it’s difficult and frustrating when you just can’t. finish. a sketchbook.
Now to the terrible -trust me- terrible steps of how i achieved such thing (without using daily challenges, which can be counter productive if you skip even a day, for me) :
- you know those like.. pretty pretty stationery sketchbooks that feel like sO INSPIRING AND PRETTY AND SLJSKSK y'know? Avoid them. Completly. In the end, for me, they put already an expectation on how good the inside should have been. i picked an old school notebook with a dumb cover and literal squared paper.
- Skip the first page. Or like, ruin it completly. i know I KNOW it’s difficult and bad and it feels like sO WRONG but do it DO IT
- Actually, when you don’t know how to finish a page or how to do a page so that it is ‘as pretty’ as the previous one, skip it. You can ALWAYS come back to it.
- Use any media you want you have to reach the point of not cARING. now y'all will kill me but i use actual watercolors (the cheapest ones of course) on that notebook. It looks terrible til it dries and again feels so so wrong. BUT AT LEAST i made a watercolor drawing, where usually i would have just half done it because i felt like i was ruining a pretty page or a pretty sketchbook
- Do not be afraid of errors. Cut some paper (or anything really) and just stick it on the thing you don’t like. drawing it again can’t do you bad (if you’re in the mood)
- MIX MEDIA
- Obsessed with something lately? DRAW/WRITE IT! doing a research for some art/writing thing? PUT THAT IN THE NOTEBOOK TOO! just seeing a lot of completed pages will make u feel a little more motivated
- at the same time, do not be afraid of putting it aside for long. don’t be the me that used to say “oh i haven’t drawn in this for so long….. now my drawings will be so different….. it’ll look so bad in one place….” no. YOU GOTTA draw in that
- Same goes for the medium you’re using. “oh i have done a lot of pencils… i can’t possibly put in there a markers drawing….” YOU CAN. DO IT
- Thank you for coming to my ted talk i’m done now
Disclaimer : this is for getting you into the habit of having a sketchbook/scrapbook, of course squared paper and copy paper are not the best for art or the mediums I use. but that’s exactly the point!
