Expressive Sketchbooks

Developing Creative Skills, Courage, and Confidence

Helen Wells

• Publisher: Quarry Books
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781631598364
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art général

Expressive Sketchbooks shares a host of creative ideas and prompts, tools and techniques, methods for working around obstacles and barriers, and tons of visual inspiration to help you grow in your sketchbooking practice. An expressive sketchbook is a place for you to explore, express, and enjoy your own innate creativity on your own terms. It is a safe playground for the imagination—a place to mess about, play, and experiment—and to gain confidence in your abilities as you develop your skills. Expressive Sketchbooks offers techniques and creative exercises that incorporate mark making, watercolor, mixed media, collage, words and text, and more. It unpacks some of the obstacles and barriers that you may face along the way and offers wisdom and encouragement to help you decide why and how to start your sketchbook and how to develop and expand your artistic practice. This book is packed with ideas and exercises, including:

• Exploratory drawing exercises
• How to utilize color in your sketchbook
• How to create dynamic and varied sketchbook pages
• How to find inspiration in nature and in your everyday life
• Ways to mix media and art supplies
• Ways to kickstart your creativity
• How to find and develop a process that feels personal to you

Through this book, you'll find out what lights you up, what makes you curious andfascinated, and what makes you expansive. Discover how to magnify your creativity and enliven your art skills by using an expressive sketchbook as your daily companion.

CHAPTER 1

MAGIC AND MOTIVATION

Why develop your own sketchbook practice? Keeping a sketchbook will help you cultivate your own self-expression and creativity. This chapter is designed to help you unpack any obstacles and barriers that may be blocking your creativity. It will also help you understand your reason for starting a sketchbook and what you’d like your sketchbook to be. Look for tips on ways in which you can reflect upon and document your artistic interests and inspirations.

REASONS TO START A SKETCHBOOK

You may not realize it now, but using a sketchbook can be life enhancing. The more you sketch, the more creative alchemy you are inviting into your life. Here are a few reasons to begin your very own sketchbook (or to continue in those moments when you feel stuck).

Play in a sketchbook to develop artistic skills. A sketchbook is a place to learn and grow—it will not be full of flawless masterpieces. Some pages will look like a mess, but that doesn’t matter.

Explore Ideas

Your sketchbook is a great place for you to understand, develop, and explore your artistic interests or preoccupations. Unpack what makes you curious about art and life and sketch those thoughts out on the pages. In developing a sketchbook, you take ideas from your head or your heart and bring them to life on paper.

A sketchbook offers an opportunity to spot patterns and recurring themes. These two sketchbook pages were created years apart. Notice the use of white floral silhouettes against a patterned background. By flicking through old sketchbooks, you can spot recurring themes and find connections.

Log Your Creative Journey

Use a sketchbook to record your creative awakening. Think of your sketchbook as a friend and companion on your artistic journey.

A sketchbook is a place to understand and explore what makes you curious. Take a germ of an idea and expand and explore it.

Intimate/Safe Place

Your sketchbook is for you. It can be a private and personal playground. You don’t have to share it with anyone. You don’t need to display its contents or put them on a wall. If you want to, you can close the cover and keep what is inside private, like your own conversation with yourself.

The contents of a sketchbook do not need to be shared publicly. Create art just for yourself, just for the joy of being creative. Sketchbook pages are for discovery, not display.

Sketchbooks record your artistic development and growth.

Develop Your Skills

We learn to create by creating. We get better by doing. Your sketchbook is a place to create and do, develop and progress.

Find pleasure in making something from nothing. Discover and develop by doing. Small, incremental actions build upon each other over time to grow skills and confidence.

Look Back in Months or Years to Come

Your sketchbook captures a season of your life. It can be very rewarding to keep all your sketchbooks and look back on where you were or what interested you at a certain time of your life. Social media has made it so easy for us to compare ourselves, our lives, our creative output, and our artwork with others. We often tend to compare our very worst efforts with someone else’s best efforts. Instead we should compare our work against our work and ask ourselves: Am I learning? Am I developing? Am I expressing myself? Am I feeling fulfilled by my output? Am I pushing myself?

Look back at old sketchbooks and discover past interests or fascinations. A sketchbook allows you to track ideas and progress over time.

A sketchbook is a ready-made filing system for your ideas.

The completed pages of art sit together in one bound volume.

All in One Place

Your sketchbook is a brilliant filing cabinet of...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction: What Is an Expressive Sketchbook?
• Chapter 1: Magic and Motivation
• Chapter 2: Getting Going
• Chapter 3: Techniques for Exploring and Experimenting
• Chapter 4: Growing your Ideas
• Chapter 5: Practice and Progress
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Dedication
• Copyright