Filling A Sketchbook

- June 17, 2022

Thanks to Karen Abend and her wonderful Sketchbook Revival 2022 I spent 5+ wonderful weeks this past spring working through 31 free video workshops from a clutch of amazing artists. The program fell at an inconvenient time for me as my house was torn apart for a complete interior paint job and while I fought off 5 weeks of allergy induced bronchitis. Next year I'll know better and block out 2 weeks of sacred time when not even TheGrandchildren will be allowed to interrupt my art days.

Well, maybe one day in March – a birthday.

If you want to be part of next year's Sketchbook Revival contact Karen via her website. In fact, it looks like you can watch a tiny video about Sketchbook Revival 2021 here - with a form for getting on her mailing list.

The workshops were so valuable, helping me break a couple of Art Curses. There was the curse of the Precious Notebook. I own dozens of these – both art journals and written word journals, all pristine. They're the ones that are too fine, too pretty, too special to mark up. Poor neglected things. It was hard. I really didn't like the first thing I made in my newest brand new sketchbook. I kept hearing that shrieking voice saying "No no no - don't mess up those pretty blank pages with your amateurish scribbles!"

But I can't make better scribbles if I don't start at all. Note to self. It's just a sketchbook. It's just paper. It was made to be scribbled in.

I also confronted The Curse of the Masterpiece – an affliction I would guess all artists struggle with but that can cripple a late starter. She is the one who sees so much good work out there. She doesn't believe she'll ever be able to make something wonderful. She's sure what she makes is trash. If she did make something wonderful it was a fluke. Who does she think she is, pretending she's an artist or even thinking – Cinderella that she is – that she's has any business attempting to be an artist.

The point of the sketchbook – after you get over these curses – is that here you can play. Here you can screw up. Here you can try to draw the dog, collage the cat, scribble the sailboat, pen the peacock and you can do it as many times as you want till you get one you like! And that's the one you show people. The sketchbook is your art playground. And the only kids who get to play there are the ones you want.

As SR22 came to a close I still had pages in the First Hand Sewn Sketchbook I Ever Made - a sneak preview workshop from bookmaker artist Sarah Mathews.

I'm determined to fill every page. I can't go back and watch any of the workshops. They were up only for a few weeks. But I can be inspired by what I watched, by the artists whose websites I've subscribed to, by what I stumble across in the mean time.

Over the next few blog posts I plan to share both the contents of the sketchbook and a few of the other insights that burst into the right superior temporal gyrus.