Sketchbooks
Sketchbooks can be a thing of beauty, invariably my sketchbooks are a little more hit and miss. Primarily for me I use sketchbooks to practice, like a dancer would practice their steps, I use the pages of sketchbooks to test out ideas, figure out ways of using materials and more often than not, to draw from life. It took me a long time to let go of being ‘precious’ about my sketchbooks, often getting disheartened when I’d do something awful, but now I’ve learned to embrace the good, the bad and the ugly. There are still pages I would choose to remain private, as that is kinda the point of a sketchbook, it’s private, a safe space - not everyone has to see it. I do generally have a rule about keeping the bad pages in, they serve as a good reminder, not just that it’s ok to have a bad day but also they can help give you perspective for when you work well - a sliding scale for the ebbs and flows of a creative practice.