We’re either at 12 or 13, the most recent number I wrote down is 10. I’ve filled 2 for sure but maybe 3 since then.
I can’t recall when the travel sketchbook I finished up recently was completed, but I know for sure we finished up two (a medium white and medium black) in the last few days. I’m pretty sure we’re at 13 but I won’t know for sure until I go through the finished sketchbook bin and count!
This is such a funny milestone to reach. Only 4 years ago I had never filled a sketchbook from front to back in my life, now I can’t recall for certain the number of books I have filled.
Here is a small sample of some favorite pages from the 2 sketchbooks we just filled up. I say “we” because my partner and daughter both draw in my sketchbooks too! This time around there’s a lot of Beastars studies. I’ve been drawing from referencing the manga, I love Itagaki’s style and I’d love to emulate it in my own anthropomorphic work!
I want to make an attempt at doing sketchbook tours in video format in the near future. A lot of people are moving out of our house soon which will free up a lot of room, I’m hoping to have a place to record in private. All I have is my phone, I don’t have any fancy equipment, but I figure it’s worth a shot either way! Stay tuned…
Until next time, take care, and I hope you have a wonderful day!
Well folks, I did it. 31 illustrations in 31 days. Some took several days to complete, some of them I only spent a few minutes on. Either way, I got it done. Now I am exhausted and never want to look at another micron pen for the rest of my life! (Just kidding.) I’ve already complained enough about how hard this was in the previous post, so I will focus on the positives now.
I really did learn a lot from this challenge, and even walked away with more confidence in my abilities! The prompts helped me come up with ideas I never would have thought of on my own, and I got several illustrations I love out of the deal. Noticing which illustrations I enjoyed making the most was very enlightening, and I will definitely be using that knowledge going forward.
For the record, I got most of my references from Pexels and Unsplash. Some were also referenced from my own photos, (such as the shed,) and a few were referenced from my imagination or memories! Another thing I’ve learned from this challenge is just how important building a visual library through mileage is. The more you draw from seeing, the more you’ll be able to draw from muscle memory! I’ve found that I really like drawing my own memories.
While I’m really grateful that I finally completed Inktober for the first time, I’m not sure it’s something I’m going to do every year. By the time next October rolls around I’m sure I’ll be considering trying again, but I will be more willing to drop it if I feel it is doing me more harm than good.
If you have any questions or comments about any of the illustrations, please feel welcome to leave a comment! Thanks for stopping by, I hope you have a wonderful day!
And the largest at that! It taught me that I prefer to work smaller, so it may continue to hold that record for a long time…
Strathmore Sketch: 400 series, recycled paper, 11×14 inch, 60lb. Painted the cover with the only Poscas I had at the time, not a color palette I’d typically go for!The liquid chrome Molotow accents on this piece really make it pop IRL!This piece just feels balanced to me and I really like the color I used. I remember I really enjoyed making it!The solid gold petals were actually because of a marker explosion! Happy accidents and all that, right? At first I was afraid it was ruined but now I like it even better.This was a value study I did with a mechanical pencil. Not the best tool for the job, and I knew that. I learned a lot and ended up really happy with the results! My reference was a photo of my dear friend’s dog, Kimber.This is actually a pretty small doodle, don’t be fooled by the image scaling! I just wanted to practice drawing hummingbirds and using alcohol markers, and ended up loving the results. Too cute!
For the longest time I could not for the life of me fill an entire sketchbook. It took me until 2019, at age 23, to completely fill a sketchbook for the first time. I still remember that chilly November morning, how I sat in our car in a gravely parking lot, doodling while I waited for my partner. I yelled from the elation when I realized I had finally done it. That was a day I checked a major milestone off my bucket list, I remember it with the same kind of clarity as the day I first held my daughter.
Now in the nearly-3-years since that time, I have somehow managed to fill another 9 sketchbooks, 5 of which I finished up this year because of my Art Supply No Buy and my newly found dedication to no longer abandoning sketchbooks partway through. I can see myself finishing up another one or two before the end of this year if I keep up this pace!
Allowing myself to see sketchbooks as a private place to practice, make a mess, and have fun has really helped me overcome the “precious sketchbook syndrome.” The gorgeous sketchbook tours filled with finished pieces on YouTube are cool and all, but not knowing that those artists probably keep a messy thumbnailing sketchbook on the side really held me back for the longest time. It’s awesome to make good art in your sketchbook, and you should always feel proud when you do, but your sketchbook should be a safe place to make bad art. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it a million times more: without bad art, there would be no good art. So make bad art, and lots of it!
This sketchbook is actually primarily filled with bad art. It was hard to pick out what to feature here because so much of it is not really spotlight worthy in my eyes. That’s actually part of why it’s become so sentimental to me though, she served me well through countless trials and errors. It’s also the first sketchbook of mine I’ve allowed my 1-year-old to flip through and scribble in wherever she pleased, and that couldn’t have happened if I cared more about the art inside! Now it is an irreplaceable treasure filled to the brim with memories.
Inktober is finally nearing it’s end. Once it’s done I will be writing a summary post and showcasing my favorite pieces. I look forward to sharing that with you all! Take care until next time, I will see you again soon!
I’m just too amused by this sketchbook page to not share it.
It took me so long to finish that she had already turned 10 months by the time I finished! It’s hard to make time for big projects like this when you’re a full-time stay-at-home mom, but it was very much worth it in my eyes. I even kept it as simple as possible, but I simply couldn’t find the time to work on it most days! It got done eventually though, as you can see.
You can’t tell just from the photo, but this is a VERY large sketchbook. I’m not sure of the dimensions, but it’s over 12″ wide. That contributed to how long it took to finish, each small illustration would have taken up most of the page in one of my travel sketchbooks!
Luckily though, starting today, I am only a part-time stay-at-home mom! Due to our situation we qualified for free daycare, so we now get 6 hours of free time every week day. She loved it too, no surprise there since she is such a social butterfly. She even napped TWICE, and she hates napping for us! I can’t wait to have so much more time to devote to my creative hobbies!
That’s all for now, I hope Monday was kind to you all, and I’ll see you in the next post!
Last night marked the completion of the 9th sketchbook I’ve ever filled from cover to cover! So as promised, here are some of my favorite pages from said sketchbook. (Some of my favorites from this sketchbook have already been featured in my post about dangle art!)
Although this sketchbook was started in 2019, I actually filled about 60% of it in the last month. I’m excited to be starting a brand-new travel sketchbook, and I’m wondering how long it will take to fill up since I won’t be abandoning it this time! I think I will take it at a leisurely pace though, since I’m working on finishing a massive sketchbook that I can only draw in at home!
I’ve been wanting to make more Google Drive folders for my sketchbooks like I’ve done for the first two I completed, but I’ve not made the time to do so. I decided to just bite the bullet and do that for at least this one I just finished! I of course wish the photos were better but something is better than nothing in this case, and there were nearly 100 pages to photograph! Some pages have been slightly altered and one withheld entirely for the sake of privacy.
I’m a sucker for all methods of doodling and pattern drawing, which is why mandala is such a recurring theme for me. Dangles are right up my artistic alley. So after copying down many patterns in the book for reference, and of course practice, I decided to create my own original artworks using the dangle method:
In the future I would love to create real, tangible, 3D dangles! My partner pointed out to me that wind chimes are in fact dangles and that just made me all the more excited about the idea!
I actually have another post set to come out as early as later today, so I will see you all again very soon. Have a wonderful day!
If you’ve read the post about my new sketchbook system you may recall me mentioning one of my “travel” category sketchbooks being bigger than I’d like. Recently I came to realize that it’s too big to fit in my cargo pants or fanny pack! I had two options: move that sketchbook to the “medium to large white paper” category, or let it go. Using a bigger bag wasn’t an option for me, due to my disabilities I need to carry as little weight as possible, and I have a tendency to fill all the space in any bag I use!
A few weeks ago I met my friend’s 4 year old daughter and we had a blast drawing together, and since I’d learned she didn’t have a sketchbook of her own, yesterday I decided to ask her mom if it was okay to give that sketchbook to her. They were both thrilled by the present!
With that taken care of, I was left without any excess travel sketchbooks in the overflow cabinet! My No Buy rules allow for replacements and refills as necessary, so I was allowed to buy one. I knew I wanted one of the exact size I’ve been using since it fits perfectly in both my cargo pants and my fanny pack, but isn’t ridiculously small either!
In order to not torture or tempt myself I actually sent my partner into the craft store for me! With her help we picked out a recycled paper sketchbook by Artist Loft. (Not sponsored!!) They were out of the exact sketchbook I had been using, but this one has the same page count, weight, is the same width and is only .5″ longer. I am excited about trying recycled paper- I think the little speckles in the pages might help me fight against the fear of the blank page!
(Image from the Michael’s website)
Well that’s all for now. I’ll make a sketchbook highlights post when I finish up this current travel sketchbook, which will be soon! I’ll see you then, take care in the meantime!
(If you take a sip of water every time I use the word “sketchbook” in this post, you should be quite hydrated by the time you’re done reading!)
Like many artists, I have suffered from constantly craving a shiny new sketchbook. I would often buy a new one before finishing the one I was working in, leaving the old one to collect dust. This is why one of my New Year’s Resolutions for 2022 was to finish filling 3 of those partially-filled sketchbooks, and at the beginning of July I was able to achieve that goal!Yesterday I went above and beyond, completing a fourth!
Through my Art Supply No Buy I have come to accept that I am not a “sketchbook monogamist” and that variety of materials is important to me. Tidiness and a minimalistic lifestyle are also important to me though, so I have come up with a system: I may have 4 sketchbooks active at any one time, but they each have their own use. These four categories of sketchbook are as follows:
One medium to large, white paper, dry or mixed media sketchbook.
One medium to large, black paper, mixed media sketchbook.
One watercolor paper sketchbook, of any size or color.
One pocket size sketchbook, of any media or color.
These categories allow me to have just enough variety for all the mediums and sizes I want to work with, while also giving me a hard limit on sketchbooks to prevent over-purchasing. When I run out of sketchbooks in one category at that point I may purchase one new one for the same category. So for example: if I fill up my black paper sketchbook I may buy a new black paper sketchbook, but not a new sketchbook of any other category… No matter how tempting the options may be!
My No Buy rules allow for replacements and refills when necessary. Because of this, depending on just how much I create this year, I could possibly find myself purchasing a new sketchbook before the year is over. Black paper is the category I am most likely to actually go all the way through, because I only have one small pad of black paper in surplus besides the sketchbook I am currently working in. We will just have to see what happens, but that could be quite exciting!
I decided to take an inventory of all the sketchbooks I have left that are waiting to be filled:
2 in the medium to large white paper category, the larger one is about half-full and the other is completely empty.
2 in the black mixed media category, one is about half-full and the other is a pad of removable paper I have only used one sheet from.
2 in the travel size category, although they are a bit bigger than I’d prefer. In the future sketchbooks of this size will be in the medium to large category, I just don’t want to buy anything right now so they will stay put. The smaller one is about half-full, the other is completely empty.
1 in the watercolor category, with a few pages full. You would think I might find myself needing another before the end of the year, but with a crazy almost-9-month-old it is hard to find time to watercolor.
Between filling up 4 sketchbooks and donating a few others, I have dropped my surplus numbers into the single digits! This is very exciting for me. I now see a number of sketchbooks I could imagine myself filling in the next 12 months, maybe even less, especially if I keep drawing as often as I have been lately.
I have to attribute a lot of this success to my change in lifestyle choices. I have not been playing video games for 42 days now, and over the last several years I have been working on cutting down on my internet consumption and overall screen time. Forcing oneself to allow for a healthy dose of boredom works wonders for increasing creativity and productivity, at least in my personal experience! Now I find drawing to be fun, a time for play and exploration, when previously it mostly felt like work and a chore compared to the instant gratification of the digital world.
Obviously technology still serves me, as I am currently writing this blog post on my smart phone. It has just become more of a tool than an entertainment device! I am currently very satisfied with my relationship to my tech and my art. It’s such a pleasure to be able to deliver such news!
It’s nice to get another post out again so soon, last night’s achievement has given me some momentum! My next post may take a while longer, but I will see you all there when it’s done. Stay safe and healthy!
Stickers courtesy of The Dollar Tree. I would love to credit the original artist but unfortunately they don’t so I have no idea who painted these lovely cacti!
These images are just a small sample of my favorite pages from this sketchbook.
The comic strips are collaborations with my partner, Jasper Rae. She did half the panels and I did the other half! It was a drawing game we came up with, one person draws a panel of a comic and then the other draws the next but with no communication or context other than the panel itself! It is based on other drawing games we’ve played and probably already existed in this same form before we thought of it, but nonetheless it is loads of fun and I highly recommend it!
I started this sketchbook all the way back in November of 2019, right after filling up the first sketchbook I ever filled from cover to cover! Most of it was actually filled in the last few months though, as part of my Art Supply No Buy side project of trying to finish up as many of my partially filled sketchbooks as possible. I “restarted” this sketchbook back in March, so it took only 4 months to fill the remaining 2/3 of the sketchbook!
While I won’t put a ton of pressure on myself to do so, I think it would be amazing if I actually managed to fill all of my semi-filled sketchbooks before the end of this year. I do own some blank ones still, so I won’t count those, but to just finally use the rest of all the ones I abandoned would be excellent. I hope to never abandon sketchbooks in such a way in the future, I plan on making much better purchasing decisions from now on!
I’ve got a couple things cooking in my drafts. I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted (relatively, given how I used to go months between posts) I’ve just been rather busy lately! Thankfully it’s not because of procrastinating anymore, I’ve come to really enjoy writing and I look forward to making these posts.
I sincerely hope you are all doing well. Thanks again for all the support! See you in the next post, whenever that may be!
(My tiny travel sketchbook started falling apart! A whole clump of pages fell out, which was very disappointing. So I decided to fill up the remaining 16 sheets as quickly as possible, which took 2 days. I had 3 more exactly like it, but unfortunately I will be donating them since they do not suit my needs. I hope they will serve their new owners well, they are very cute but they just aren’t durable enough for me.)
Included in my list of intentions for 2022 was a goal to finish up 3 of my partially filled sketchbooks, and near midnight of June 30th 2022 I accomplished exactly that!
My partner actually made it possible to finish before July, because she took on the job of filling the last 4 pages in my tiny travel sketchbook, much to my relief! I had been worried an hour and a half left in the day wouldn’t be enough time, as I am a chronic over-thinker! I set the deadline of midnight for myself because I heard it helps to set deadlines, especially if you’re prone to procrastinating. She really saved the day, I was feeling exhausted from the long day we had, and I’d already filled so many pages in such a short time!
My sketchbooks aren’t only for me, I love to invite others to draw in them and leave their mark. I cherish the drawings provided by others, they are the most special to me, far more important to me than anything I draw. I’m aware many artists may find me crazy for this, as for them their sketchbook is a sacred place for only them. I’m just not like that though, I enjoy art-making so much more when it’s with friends. My sketchbooks are like journals for me, which is why I also write in them and paste things in, they are books filled with memories. In my eyes, the doodle of a friend is a treasure.
I am so relieved to have, with plenty of help from my lovely partner, succeeded at finishing up 3 sketchbooks in a year. While it’s not quite as impressive as filling 3 brand-new sketchbooks from front to back in a year, I couldn’t be happier to have less clutter in my art cabinet! In the future I need to be diligent about not buying new sketchbooks if I don’t have a genuine need for one. I could write a whole post about my sketchbook categories and how I plan to handle purchasing new sketchbooks in the future, and I probably will honestly.
I would love to finish up even more sketchbooks this year, but either way this marks 7 sketchbooks filled, I am very satisfied with my progress! It took me twenty-something years to finally fill even just one, when I was younger I never would have imagined I’d actually fill seven entire books filled with intimidating blank paper.
That’s it for now, just wanted to share the celebration with you all! Have a wonderful day and I will see you in the next post!
Ari October Art 