Hello everyone! A bit of a simpler post this week, but I wanted to show you the new sketchbook that I just started.
So I’ve been wanting a sketchbook to use for travel, something that I can throw into a purse and casually draw in. I have two that are in progress right now one is for thumbnails and brain dump sketching and the second is personal. Both are from Walmart, I love them because the papers are designed to be taken out and moved around. I’m an incredibly controlled person when it comes to my sketchbooks, so when I dislike something or hate the way the drawing it turning most of the times I’ll just rip it out and try it again on a fresh page. Which is why I like using the ones from Walmart, they are cheap, affordable and the paper quality is nothing special so I don’t feel to guilty about blowing through it. I’ve been trying to remind myself that it’s ok to make mistakes and spend time correcting or adjusting them instead of immediately scrapping them. Not everything needs to be perfect.
Which is why I’ve decided to look for a nicer quality sketchbook that I could treat a bit more casually. One that I can’t really rip papers out or move them around. I’ve been really overwhelmed with all of the possible options I could get. I wanted something with a softcover, small, and able to lay flat against a table. It took me a while but I eventually narrowed it down to between a Leuchtturm1917 or a Moleskine notebook. Now, Moleskine’s are more widely available and tend to be a bit more affordable. However, the Leuchtturm1917 is known to be better quality overall, especially regarding their paper. In the end, I couldn’t fully decide until I came across them in person. I found them both at my local Barnes & Noble, and spent a lot of time mulling the decision over. I wanted to pick something I was excited to draw in and use on a day to day basis. I ended up choosing the Leuchtturm1917, I appreciated that the pages were numbered and that there was a built in index to the book. Although it’s not explicitly designed as a sketchbook, (they do have a sketchbook version but it wasn’t at that store) I didn’t really mind because I’d never had a Leuchtturm1917 before and wanted to see if I liked it better than the Moleskines I’d had in the past.
It’s been a few days since I got it and I’d say I’m really happy with it! Heres the couple pages I’ve worked on already. The first page of a sketchbook is always so intimidating for me but in the spirit of not being so perfectionistic I just started drawing and had fun with what I was doing. I also want to try and utilize all of the space in my sketchbook this time around as well. Typically, I leave the left page blank because I really hate drawing on that side for some reason. But I’m trying to get comfortable being uncomfortable so my goal is to fill both sides of the pages throughout the whole book, which starts with the first page. I normally would have kept the design to the right side, but I found I actually liked having the sketch reach across the book. The second page I drew my dog Rudy, I could definitely feel myself getting nit-picky about it in the way I tried to perfectly center the sketch but I’m still really happy with the result. I’ve been loving using different colors in contrast to graphite recently. I’ve always generally stuck to using pencil for sketches, its what I’m most comfortable with. But I want to work other mediums into my sketchbook like colored pencil, pen, marker, or paint. I think I may go back into this page and add in some accents with other mediums. I need to figure out what to draw on the left page anyway so maybe I’ll experiment more there.
Overall I’m really happy with the notebook choice and I’m excited to work in it more. It’s going to take a lot of work to get myself to not be so uptight in how I treat each page of my sketchbook but I’m excited for the challenge, I really want to get into my head that I don’t have to love every page. It’s ok to mess up, or not be happy with a result. It’s all apart of the learning process!
Thanks for reading!
Emma <3