My 30 Day Sketchbook Challenge
I can’t believe its two years since I took the leap into this incredible journey that transformed my approach to creativity. It still feels relevant now as I begin a new direction with a renewed sense of passion and possibility.
A short piece on why you should consider a daily practice that inspires and encourages growth: whatever it is, it’s just for you.
I didn’t know what to expect when I first made the commitment to myself. I’d jumped in on Day One. I knew I probably wouldn’t get to the end of the thirty days but held on to the ‘didn’t matter’ attitude. The commitment was key for me: daily prompts to action; entering a supportive community of artists; empowering one another. It encouraged a consistent intention to stay on the path.
So a huge thanks to Cheryl Taves at Insight Creative Coaching for guiding the way: offering encouragement, wise words and holding the space for this journey.
By the end so much had transformed for me, I couldn’t have guessed at the potential impact and unfolding possibilities. To be honest I thought my sketchbook practice was pretty solid, regular and resourceful, a stable one that I dipped into.
So how could I have not seen what it/I had been missing? - Because I wasn’t ready to see.
Here’s what I learnt…
That my creative direction each day had been haphazard at times, meandering and restless. It was always going to be a long road to get back into painting I knew that after such a long break. But I hadn’t realised how scattered my ideas were, stemming from so many different influences, likes and dislikes.
So were my previous sketchbooks wasted time? - No of course not.
Had I begun exercising my creativity through moments of discernment to give me forward momentum? - Yes, because your creative actions are your artistic voice and …
…Your artistic voice is you.
“Notice what you notice - that is where your voice, your style and your inspiration can be found” Cheryl Taves
So what did my sketchbooks say about me? I didn’t know it then but after thirty days, I noticed consistency in my curiosity while paying attention to the prompts. I started to look more consciously at how I could fulfil them daily.
Here’s an example of one of the daily prompts:
Day 8;
Consider the edges of your work. Do you avoid them? Do you pay attention to them?…
You can see the rest of this post and the others by going to Insight Creative Coaching
I naturally started the unpicking of my approach from the ground up, from sketchbook tendencies to painting choices.
I was reminded of how nourishing a creative ritual practice of meeting my expressive-self could be.
Each page was an opportunity for growth in a focused dialogue. It became increasingly significant to observe and reflect: the page became a place to bring form to my subtle feelings of connection. The broadness of the prompts encouraged personal interpretation and subject choice: my daily responses to Nature ranged from the purely abstract, through textural, to representational via process experimentation.
I noticed how the page was a significant crossing place, bringing the seen or unseen into form. Each unique interpretation was a dance so fluid and enlivening, I couldn’t wait to do the next page and the next. So much so by the end of the thirty days I’d all but filled my lovely book and was more than ready to start a new fresh, clean, pristine one.
I observed repetition: one of line, stripes, asemic/ automatic script or sigilic forms and their significance to my internal dialogue. It was a very meditative fascination with a quality of expressive, obsessive outpouring. There’s often no outer connection or conscious interaction with a stimulus. On one level it’s the process of bringing what’s ‘within’ me and capturing that ‘outside’ of myself.
I noticed in the daily movement through the pages a growth in my techniques, guided by the leading, experimental prompts.
Following this thread led me to do more of what I loved and uncover new ways of doing it: textures, layering, masking areas, using masking fluid and the vast potential it has, glazes over impasto and so on.
Looking back over the 30 days my biggest takeaway is the value of this gift of time and dedication to a daily practice and the lessons it taught: facilitating ways to solidify my visual language and identifying my needs as an Artist.
This daily permission created opportunities: time to look back; ask questions; pick out small sections that held a clarity of interest and build on those; separate what is working for me, each choice paring back, simplifying, focusing and reducing to a more intensified formula. I developed a stronger sense of myself in my art; how to take a risk; move past the novelty of something new to be able to refine, discard, discern and move forward; time to mess it up then return to it another day and do something completely unexpected and fresh.
The structure of a month-long challenge gives you permission to spend time on yourself and your creative voice. That nurturing daily practice opens a safe space and encourages you to confront the obstacles to your creative expression. It’s definitely a challenge but I found it extraordinarily rewarding.
Catch up with some of my 30 day sketchbook pages to see the progression.
Some of the pages are so thick with paint they are foundations for being the painting that never ends. Now that’s a good place to start a new blog post. The never ending painting do you have one of those? I certainly do, in fact probably several that have been through various iterations.
“ART IS THE CONCRETE REPRESENTATION OF OUR MOST SUBTLE FEELINGS”
