It has been a long week, lots of life lessons for me on boundary setting and listening to my intuition. But that is a story for another time! Last week I opened up an AMA in my substack chat- and I was so excited to see some thoughtful questions and experiences. I really appreciate you all sharing your questions, you are welcome to throw your question in the chat, in the comments below or to message me with it! I plan to use these almost as prompts since sometimes I can feel frozen in my writing and having these questions to turn to is a great way to break out of that.
Tay asked, “I’ve always been weak when it comes to project prep in my sketchbook. Is there any advice you can give for this? (I understand that there’s no one way to do this, but would be great to see what advice you have). Thank you”
First, thanks, Tay, for already knowing and acknowledging that there is no one way to do this. That one hundred percent would be my first thing to point out. There are a ton of ways to have a practice of prepping for projects in your sketchbook and I have worked with students who collage, paint, use markers and mixed media or pencils and a few who just like to do writing.
It took me a while to develop a sketchbook practice, I had a nice habit of buying sketchbooks but no real habit in how to use them. I often felt frozen once I would open them up, no idea felt good enough, every mark I made was not right. This would begin to translate into my work, I didn’t have any ideas, or I should say I had ideas but I couldn’t find them in my head when I would sit down. I would be blank and so my illustrations and paintings felt a little empty.
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