82 – How to start a sketchbook practice

Laura

0:00
We talked in episode 9 about our love of art supplies and our addiction to purchasing sketchbooks. Every once in a while Nikki and I actually fill some up.

Nikki

0:10
I know you’re speaking for yourself and not for me. In this episode, we’re going to talk all about our own sketchbook practices and why we have them, suggestions on how to choose the right sketchbook for you and more.

Laura

0:30
Hi, this is Laura Lee Griffin.

Nikki

0:32
And this is Nikki May with the Startist Society, inspiring you to stop getting in your own way and start building an art biz and life that you love.

Laura

0:41
We are artists who believe strongly in the power of community, accountability, following your intuition, taking small actionable steps and breaking down the barriers of fear and procrastination that keep you stuck.

Nikki

0:54
Follow along with us on our creative business journey as we encourage you on yours.

Laura

1:02
I recently just completed a watercolor sketchbook and there’s nothing quite like that feeling of finishing up the last page and then flipping through the whole book.

Nikki

1:11
Filling up a sketchbook is an amazing feeling that I’ve rarely ever felt in my life. Mostly I have sketchbooks with about 15 pages drawn and written in. So here’s a question I’ve heard people ask that maybe we can address. What’s the difference between an art journal and a sketchbook? Are they the same thing? Are they different?

Laura

1:32
Well, how would you answer that question, Nikki?

Nikki

1:34
All right. To me, an art journal is like a visual diary. I think of people preparing a bunch of pages in advance with collage and/or printed or painted backgrounds and then using them either as a personal or travel journal, creating finished spreads, sharing their thoughts or quotes or experiences with a combination of written words and images much like you would a diary.

Laura

2:00
Okay, so what about a sketchbook?

Nikki

2:02
Well to me, a sketchbook is where you practice your techniques and work out ideas for your larger completed art. They can definitely contain finished pieces, but that isn’t really their purpose.

Laura

2:13
Okay.

Nikki

2:14
They’re where you do your first sketches of ideas, thumbnails of compositions, practice drawing that hand in that one particular position, so when you do it on the real piece, you don’t screw it up.

Laura

2:25
Hands are so hard.

Nikki

2:27
I know so are feet, which is why you’ll often see one of my sketches of a beautiful woman who’s got plants growing up around her feet. Anyway, so yeah, so a sketchbook is also where you can like test color swatches. It’s also where I sketch out logo ideas before taking them into Illustrator. So for both art and design, it’s where I can get out as many concepts as possible quickly and roughly, before refining the finished work. I’ve always had a sketchbook rather than an art journal. What about you, Laura?

Laura

3:05
Well, I think it can be a combination of the two. There are some artists that I know that truly journal each day, but it’s so artistic that the illustrations from those journals can turn into finished art pieces. And I do know a lot of mixed media artists that prep their surfaces and they use really cool rubber stamps and stencils and sprays and then they write their thoughts in them, which to me is a little bit more of an art journal versus a sketchbook. But really, you can call the thing any dang thing you want, because to me a sketchbook practice means you’re doing something creative inside of a book every day, or at some level of regular frequency. So what you call it really doesn’t matter.

Nikki

3:46
Can I call it Fred?

Laura

3:48
Dork. So you can have a beautifully finished art journal or just a partially finished one. A sketchbook where all the pieces are finished art or they are just color swatches. I really think you shouldn’t put a label on it personally.

Nikki

4:04
So you’re saying I shouldn’t call it Fred?

Laura

4:07
I don’t know Nikki, it might be a Francine.

Nikki

4:10
Okay, let’s move on and get into the uses of sketchbooks.

Laura

4:15
Or art journals or whatever you want to call them. So one of the great benefits is that keeping a sketchbook can be a huge stress reliever. I personally often watercolor in my sketchbook after a long day in my day job and it totally shifts my brain into my happy place. I lose track of time and I have so much fun playing with different colors and ideas. And it’s totally doable in small chunks of time when you don’t have hours to spend creating, especially if you work with a smaller size sketchbook and this just takes out some of the intimidation factor.

Nikki

4:52
Another great benefit of keeping a sketchbook is you can just totally experiment. Nobody else has to see the results. And you can totally let go of expectations of how something is supposed to look. This can be just practice for you, and not every page has to be perfect. They don’t all have to be Instagram worthy. Once you let go of that expectation, it can be a really fun thing to work on. And you might be surprised with the results.

Laura

5:17
Yeah, you can create a sketchbook with a specific collection or theme of artwork in it.

Nikki

5:23
Yeah, well, we see people’s beautiful themed sketchbooks on Instagram and often want to do that ourselves – like your watercolor sketchbook, or my accordion fold sketchbooks that are really works of art themselves. I don’t think that’s really the original idea of a sketchbook.

Laura

5:40
Yeah, a lot of artists even talk about having a quote unquote, ugly sketchbook that’s solely for experimentation, working out ideas, practicing new marks or thumbnails of larger things that we might want to create. And if you feel pressure to create a perfect Instagram worthy sketchbook, maybe you want to have an ugly sketchbook going alongside the perfect one.

Nikki

6:03
Yeah, to me, the nice thing about a sketchbook is that unlike the intimidation of a large white canvas or a piece of pristine watercolor paper, you can use the smaller whitespace of your sketchbook for practice, practice and more practice.

Laura

6:17
Yeah, in Episode Seven, we talked about art challenges and sketchbooks are perfect for 100 day, a 30 day, or a 14 day project or challenge.

Nikki

6:28
And if you’re interested in urban sketching, we have two episodes all about this, check out our interview with James Richards, Episode 71 and 72 if you haven’t heard them yet. But there’s a whole global movement around drawing in your sketchbook en plein air out in the world.

Laura

6:43
I love urban sketching. It’s super fun. So Nikki, how do you select the right sketchbook?

Nikki

6:49
Well, if you’re like me, you don’t make a choice you just buy all of them. But seriously, it’s important to first identify what medium you’re going to be working in. So do you draw in pencil or are you going to use alcohol markers? Or are you going to use watercolor? Or do you want to just be able to use a variety of mixed media? The type of sketchbook you purchase should match the type of experimentation you want to do. You definitely don’t want super thin paper in your sketchbook that’s going to warp if you use watercolors or if you use heavy marker that might bleed through.

Laura

7:24
Yeah, for example, I wouldn’t take a pencil sketchbook and use that with my Copic markers or watercolors for sure.

Nikki

7:31
Agreed. So Laura, what’s another consideration when you choose your sketchbook?

Laura

7:35
Well, once you’ve defined the purpose of your sketchbook, if it will contain illustrations that you might want to use commercially, you’ll probably want to scan in your work. So for scanning, you’ll want either perforated edges or something that can lay flat for scanning later. And that means you probably want to avoid a spiral bound journal unless it has those perforated edges.

Nikki

7:57
Oh yeah, for sure you want to think about this. I’d like to scan the over 100 pages of my accordion fold sketchbooks. But that’s a lot of pages to scan and folds in the paper to touch up in Photoshop.

Laura

8:11
Oh, wow.

Nikki

8:12
I’ve actually been trying to do that for eons. And it’s a huge pain. So if anybody has any great ideas for me, I’m all ears.

Laura

8:18
Well, that was one continuous drawing. So it would be like six inches by 30 feet stitched together or something. I’m pretty sure your computer is not going to like that.

Nikki

8:29
Oh, it already doesn’t. All right, Laura, what about the size of your sketchbook? How do you decide what size is is right for you? Which do you prefer?

Laura

8:40
Well, sketchbooks vary in size from a pocket size or even smaller. Have you seen those people with little tiny books that are the size of like a dime or a quarter,

Nikki

8:50
I have a couple of those tiny ones on a necklace that I really need to draw on?

Laura

8:54
Well, I think you’d need a microscope. You can you can get them all the way up to something larger than I think 9 by 12 inches. So I used to do the pocket size, four by six inch the most. But now I gravitate these days towards a medium size watercolor sketchbook.

Nikki

9:14
Yeah, you should also consider if you’re going to be carrying this sketchbook around frequently versus just working on it in your studio. Think about what size is best for portability if you plan to take it with you everywhere. I definitely have a larger one to work on at home and a pocket size one that fits in my backpack.

Laura

9:33
Yeah, and you also want to define your orientation. So do you work in portrait or landscape mode? Do you like square journals?

Nikki

9:40
I love squares, but they’re definitely the hardest to find.

Laura

9:44
Well, they’re becoming easier, but then again, I have way too many journals in my stash including square ones.

Nikki

9:51
Same. You’ll also want to think about your budget. You can buy small inexpensive journals for like 10 bucks or you can spend over 150 on a beautiful hand bound one.

Laura

10:02
Or you can make your own there are plenty of online classes that show you how to make your own stitch journals from the paper of your choice, which can be cheap or expensive to make.

Nikki

10:14
Yeah, I’ve taken a few live workshops on making sketchbooks and while it’s fun to do one time, it is so time consuming.

Laura

10:22
Yes, my friend Liane makes incredible coptic stitched books from high end watercolor paper with her own artwork, laminated on the covers and the inner pages all have different little folding parts that are super cool, they like fold out and she can churn those out, but I made one with her once and decided that I should retire my bookmaking career. They’re so tough, and they’re really time consuming to make.

Nikki

10:50
Yeah, I’m not ever going to make my own on a regular basis. But I love to buy handmade sketchbooks when I find ones by artists that I know and like. I’ll show some of the gorgeous ones I’ve purchased from artist friends in the show notes.

Laura

11:02
Awesome. I’ll share one as well.

Nikki

11:04
So another way of keeping a sketchbook is digitally. I haven’t made a practice of it, but I’ve definitely used Procreate and GoodNotes on occasion to make sketches. But I know there’s some apps that are completely dedicated to digital sketchbooks. I haven’t used it myself, but I know there’s one that’s simply called Sketchbook that looks like it’s really cool.

Laura

11:23
Okay, well even Procreate recently came out with a functionality to create pages inside of a document. And if you already own an iPad, a pencil and the app, hey, your sketchbooks free.

Nikki

11:35
Oh, that’s awesome. I didn’t even realize that. I’ll have to give it a try.

Laura

11:39
Yeah, you have to give it a try.

Nikki

11:41
So we suggest that you take all these ideas into consideration and make your own selection. So Laura, what are your favorite sketchbooks.

Laura

11:50
I tend to use watercolor sketchbooks and the brands that I gravitate towards are Moleskine and Travelogue, which enabled me to do paintings on either side of the page without too much warping. And they basically cost less than $30. I’ve also heard really great things about the Etchr sketchbooks and the Pentalic journals.

Nikki

12:10
My go to is a Moleskine medium or large sketchbook.

Laura

12:14
Wait, is it Mole-skin, Mole-skeen, moleskine or moleskeena. I’m so confused and I think I’ve been saying it wrong for years.

Nikki

12:24
Well, here’s something that will make you feel better. I actually looked it up and the CEO of the company who’s Italian, so he would likely pronounce it Moleskine says that the Italian based company is a brand with quote, undefined national identity, and that’s the way we like it. So according to him, there’s no wrong way to say it. But you probably shouldn’t call it Fred.

Laura

12:49
You and the Fred thing. Okay. So I haven’t been pronouncing it incorrectly. It’s just one of a gazillion ways to say it.

Nikki

12:59
Absolutely.

Laura

13:00
I kind of want to say like Moleskine though, because that just sounds very sophisticated. So maybe I’m just gonna start saying it that way now.

Nikki

13:06
Well, it is very Italian. Moleskine.

Laura

13:11
There’s a hand gesture involved in that too.

Nikki

13:13
There is, when you say something the Italian way you have to hold up your hand Moleskine. All right, so let’s give some general tips and best practices on working in your sketchbook.

Laura

13:26
Okay, so one great tip, especially if you’re working with any sort of wet media is to get some page protectors. So food supply stores sell small boxes of deli wrap sheets, they’re like six inches by six inches. These work great to put in between the pages of your journal so that they don’t stick together or you don’t accidentally reactivate the watercolor on the back of the page you’re working on and have it bleed onto another page. Don’t ask me how I know this is an issue. Also, if you’re working with a wet medium, you may want to place your sketchbook under a heavy book to keep the pages from warping once it’s mostly dry.

Nikki

14:04
That’s great advice. So another great tip is to make your sketchbook very accessible. Don’t hide it away. Keep it readily available where you’re going to see it every day and not just the sketchbook; keep your favorite pen with it. Or have a little sketchbook kit with your favorite pencils, watercolor set and brushes. Make it easy to just start without having to set everything up. And you can just set a timer and give yourself 10 minutes or so sketchbook time every day.

Laura

14:34
I’m also a huge fan of cute pencil cases. There’s a theme here, I collect a lot of things, pencil case is one of them. I own way too many.

Nikki

14:43
Of course you do.

Laura

14:45
And I actually keep a sketchbook kit in one of them and it has an eraser, a waterbrush, my travel brushes, my favorite mechanical pencil and a white gel pen inside and that really just enables me to sketch on the fly.

Nikki

14:58
I really need to do that. too.

Laura

15:01
And if you’re scared of messing up the first blank page of your sketchbook, give yourself permission to add a pretty wash of color without any fancy detail or something, you know, just to get supplies on the page and then doodle over them.

Nikki

15:13
So what do you put in your sketchbook, Laura?

Laura

15:15
Only one sketchbook? I have more than one.

Nikki

15:18
What do you put in your multiple sketchbooks, Laura?

Laura

15:24
Well, I’ve done 30 days of watercolor flowers, a series of animal wildlife and more. And it can help to have a theme to either limit the subject matter, the supplies you use, or the colors so you don’t go into that decision overwhelm. What about you, Nikki?

Nikki

15:42
Well, as I mentioned earlier, I like to use them to work out ideas for larger works or design projects. Unlike you, I’m not doing color exploration, my drawings on paper are all black and white. And the same goes for my sketchbooks. When I’m not using them to work out specific ideas, I’ll sometimes give myself some guidelines. Like for example, the accordion fold sketchbooks that I’ve mentioned probably 20 times on different episodes, I just gave myself the rules that I would use my favorite pen, which is a Uniball Signo. Okay, and just draw something every single day in one continuous drawing, the subject matter wasn’t set and how much I drew wasn’t set. Some days, it was five minutes, sometimes it was five hours, just depending on how much time that I had that day or what I was procrastinating. But I suggest keeping your goals small enough that it’s super easy to stick to.

Laura

16:37
Well, that’s the great thing about sketchbooks, it’s that they’re they’re less overwhelming to work with. Now, if you’re still needing some inspiration, there are several books that really inspire you to create a regular sketchbook or art journaling practice.

Nikki

16:51
All right, so what are some of your favorites, Laura.

Laura

16:54
So two really great ones are Draw Your World and Draw Your Day by Samantha Dion Baker. Now she shows you how to illustrate your day with watercolor and pen, she actually uses a Copic multiliner pen. And she’s a New York based author and creates these stunning pages of her everyday life. She’ll take maybe five different elements of her day and create this incredible composition, mixing all of them onto one illustrated page. And I’m a huge fan of her work. She also has a class on Skillshare that we’ll link to in the show notes that shows you her daily process.

Nikki

17:29
Awesome. I’m not familiar with that one. I’ll have to check her out.

Laura

17:32
Yeah, she’s amazing. I also love Danny Gregory’s books. And if you aren’t familiar with Danny Gregory, you’re missing out. Danny is the founder of Sketchbook Skool, and is a beautiful writer. But he also has an amazing personal story. And you can read about it in his memoir, Everyday Matters. And it’s written in his own handwriting and sketches. And it’s basically his personal sketchbook. And the short story is, his wife and his lives were changed in an instant when she fell off a platform in a subway station and ended up having her spinal cord severed.

Nikki

18:06
Oh my god.

Laura

18:07
I know. So as he began caring for his wife, Danny began living in each moment and documenting the every day in his sketchbook. And that turned into this amazing perspective on life and into a successful career in writing and in education. And I also really love another one of his books, The Creative License: Giving Yourself Permission to be the Artist You Truly Are. And it’s the best kind of permission giving. And again, it’s all written in his own handwriting, Sark style, and with his own sketches.

Nikki

18:39
Yeah, I love Danny Gregory’s sketches and his writing about sketching. Maybe we can get him to be on the podcast.

Laura

18:47
That would be awesome.

Nikki

18:49
Yeah, it would. Are you listening, Danny? All right, so here are a few books I’ve purchased over the years that give you sneak peeks into a variety of different sketchbooks. The first one is called Drawn In: A Peek into the Inspiring Sketchbooks of 44 Artists, Illustrators, Graphic Designers and Cartoonists by Julia Rothman. It’s a beautiful book I just love, it doesn’t even have to be writing, just sneak peeks of other people’s sketchbooks.

Laura

19:19
Mm hmm.

Nikki

19:19
So another one is called Sketchbooks: The Hidden Art of Designers, Illustrators and Creatives by Richard Brereton. And I also love looking at published sketchbooks by either contemporary or famous artists. One I really love is Frida Khalo’s and it’s called Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self Portrait.

Laura

19:43
I love getting in the minds of creative artists that I admire and just seeing their own way of doing a self portrait and their own way of creating a sketchbook. So Nikki, what are our key takeaways today?

Nikki

19:57
Well, first, it doesn’t matter if you call it a sketchbook, an art journal or even if you call it Fred, the important thing is that you actually use it and make it a regular practice.

Laura

20:08
And if you’re Nikki, you can just draw in it while you’re swigging your favorite bourbon cocktail. Or Nikki, I have a great idea for your next 30 day challenge. Sketch 30 different types of bourbon.

Nikki

20:21
Oh my god, I love it. But how do I store 30 different bottles of bourbon on my bus?

Laura

20:27
And what do you say when you get pulled over by the cops and you have 30 open bottles? I mean, that kind of sounds like the episode for a different podcast.

Nikki

20:37
Maybe I’ll have to go to my favorite cocktail bars for that challenge.

Laura

20:40
There you go. Now it’s your turn. Do you have a sketchbook practice? Do you want to start one but you’re intimidated? Share it with us in the Startist Society Facebook group, or on Instagram @startistsociety?

Nikki

20:55
To read today’s Startist Society shownotes go to startistsociety.com/sketchbookpractice.

Laura

21:03
If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, we’d love for you to share it with a friend. Sharing helps us reach more Startist like you and keeps us inspired to create new episodes.

Nikki

21:12
Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week.