I have been working and practicing in my sketchbooks a lot more this year. While I am still in love with mixed media and art journal type pages, I am really trying to improve my sketching, in an actual drawing type way!

I have signed up for some classes, a couple I have completed and some (ok many) are in process and some (ok too many) are waiting to be started.

Are you a class taker? Do you feel they benefit your skill building? I find that some do and some don’t. I particularly enjoy classes which are vague enough to let you run with your style and preferences and provide ideas and inspiration. Classes I try to avoid (no always successfully) are the ones where you end up with a very similar body or piece of work to everyone else in the class including the teacher.

One of my favourite ways of working and learning in my sketchbook is the weekly (Friday at various times) art club held on Instagram live by The Good Ship Illustration, it is an hour of timed drawing with themes like ‘draw with your non dominant hand’, ‘continuous line drawing’ or my all time favourite ‘draw with a stick’. We are literally drawing anything in front of us and it is pure sketching practice.

I feel like I have lost my creating mojo a little bit lately so I thought that if I had a look through this year’s sketchbooks and had a little chat here on my blog, it might help! Would you believe it, I think it has helped. Just laying out a few sketchbooks and seeing the pages I like and of course the ones I am not so keen on has made me realize what I want to do more of.

Happy creating and happy Saturday!