In my sketchbooks I tend to think I need to come up with a finished image. Make a polished page. You know, you get this habit of thinking when you have spent a lot of years making art for sale. People don’t want to buy stuff you kind of threw on a canvas.
Wait a minute. I’m not making art for the purpose of sale these days. Of course, I’d sell something if someone sees it and wants it (though I’m just as likely to give it away, too. Try me and see.) Anyway, my sketchbook pages are for fun. For me to have fun. They don’t have to make sense to anyone but me and they don’t have to look nice.
So, when I started to work on a page recently, and things didn’t go well, I just pulled out another photo and added more drawing to the page. Here are three photos I used for some TV watching sketch time. And here is the page in the sketchbook.
The window on the left side of the page came from a fourth photo, but…I can’t find it now…
From September 2020. The page is 8″ x 8″.
Claudia McGill and Her Art World 
I like the ants sign!😄 Thankfully getting things organised on the page has always been a non-starter for me.
Thank you, that Ants sign really appealed to me and I kept the photo even after I did the drawing (usually I throw them away). When I draw I am never sure how things will go, I have little control over my drawings, it seems, and they sprawl or go their own way. I should know by now not to fight it! because it’s the way all my other art goes, too!
It took me until this year to realize that sketch books do not have to be perfect. They really are kind of the junk drawer of the mind. And everyone keeps their junk drawer sort of private. And truthfully, your suggestions of decent writing implements and notebooks has made a big difference in my sketch book endeavors. Just because something is a junk drawer, doesn’t mean it has to look like a junk drawer right?? Thanks! XO
I don’t think of a sketch book as a junk drawer at all, I think it’s more a diary. Things that interest me. Not a jumble of odds and ends. I like making them, they let me explore things I would not otherwise do, maybe, or else they just are relaxing and without pressure to sell or to be appealing to anyone else. I have several different ones at any one time, for different mediums or purposes, I’m glad I started doing it and I plan to do more since I don’t make art to sell anymore.
I really like the way you curate these drawings onto the page so that the composition of the whole piece is as pleasing as the compositions within each smaller frame.
Thank you. I think it is natural to me to organize the page even if the items don’t really go together. The urge for balance and order shows up everywhere, I think.
🤔 um.., ” Of course, I’d sell something if someone sees it and wants it (though I’m just as likely to give it away, too. Try me and see.” the exception being your sketch books.. 😕
I am capricious. Yes, I admit it.
well I really dig your work…Especially the ink drawings…You want to trade ?
If it’s mail art, then I always make it thinking I could send it away. Sketchbooks or images in sketchbooks, they are for me, I guess, it’s a newish thing for me to make art just for me, so I would not include them.
Gotcha
I agree that sketchbooks are for yourself. And somehow the lack of pressure makes the work better.
Yes, I think so too. I sold my artwork for decades and knowing I needed to please others always influenced my work, even if I tried not for this to happen. It’s just a fact when you are making art for others that you think this way. Now I am retired from this and make art for me. Sketchbooks are not something I ever made or sold in the past, so, my mind is extra free to roam when I am working in them, since there is no past memories or restrictions to influence me. I like looking over them and I hope that someday my little granddaughter might be interested. Or not. Doesn’t matter. I don’t make them for her, but for me! Either way, it’s important to me to do these just for me now. And I am really enjoying it.
Amazing drawings! Oh and if you hadn’t shown the real sign I might not believe there was a real sign that just screamed ANTS in large letters – ha!
I know. I saw that sign and I had to take a photo to remember it, because for some reason the outright in your face ANTS is just not something you expect to come upon as you are walking down the street.
That sign is sort of legendary – good job with your observations 🙂