I filled a sketchbook for the first time in less than a year. And most of it is filled with the stinkiest of trash. It is covered with silly circles, unfinished sketches, terribly drawn mouths, and a ton of notes of how I want to improve a drawing. There are drawings I tried to save but made it worse when I tried to draw over them.
My Ugly Sketchbook has led to some of the best art exploration that has benefitted my illustrations in a way I never thought possible. I have created killer character designs, practiced calligraphy and lettering, and learned how to build characters out of the simplest of shapes.
Filling a sketchbook with nonsense is not failing at making art or failing at being a Creative. When I was in high school applying to art colleges, some required a filled sketchbook in the application. I assumed then that they wanted the best sketches with the most clean pages with your best work. I felt like I needed a sketchbook for my sketchbook. My assumption was wrong and I think that believe led to slow and sometimes stagnant growth in my art.
It wasn't until my 2nd year of college when I took a cafe sketch class that I realized what it means to fill a sketchbook. My professor, a previous Disney artist, only let us use ball point pens so that we would learn to be confident in the first stroke of our drawings. We went to our local zoo to draw animals and I was so terrified to draw animals from real life, I barely drew for the first hour because I was scared of not drawing them correctly and clean. Then I saw my professor demonstrate using simple shapes to build out the drawings, using the pressure of his ballpoint pen to slowly build the elephant from a couple circles and squares to full on detailed sketches. I saw how much he looked at his sketchbook while drawing, barely at all. Sometimes he would leave a sketch half done and move onto the next. Sometimes he would draw the children looking at the elephants or the environment around him. Sometimes he focused on a plant or one part of the elephants anatomy. He drew like his pen was an extension of his arm. I could tell that a blank page didn't scare him. Cleanliness is not the goal of a sketchbook. It's experimentation, trial, and error.
Below is a highlight of the sketchbook I finished. And if it weren't for the many 'bad' drawings, there wouldn't be good ones.
Click the photo below to be taken to my sketchbook highlights of 2024 thus far.
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