I’m going to be switching up the posting of these sketchbook pages - in the future I’ll be releasing a “Sketchbook Tour” on my Youtube channel. These still images will go into a gallery and be kept here, but I will no longer be making these blog style posts. The best place to find me and my thoughts and my drawings is on youtube! Love to you :)
In the garden of that unseen world...
A lot of the spreads in my sketchbook look like this - just a big collection of info. I love to Know Things and so when I find a new and interesting topic, I tend to get a little obsessed. This type of research often informs my work, helps keep me creative, and lets me take very satisfying and aesthetically pleasing notes. You can click the image to get a closer look and learn a few mushroom-related facts.
“Mushrooms were the roses in the garden of that unseen world, because the real mushroom plant was underground. The parts you could see - what most people called a mushroom - was just a brief apparition.”
If you want to change the world...
I’ve been away for a little over a week, but for good reason - I’m putting together a few really exciting projects that will be revealed in the next few months. These projects will live in both the digital and physical realms, and I can’t wait to share them. But since I can’t share them yet… here’s more sketchbook work.
This page follows a common theme in my sketchbooks - absolutely messy and without purpose. Sketches, collaged pits, doodles and stickers - sometimes you just need to throw a bunch of ideas together and see how it looks. Enjoy (and as always, click for a closer look)!
Also! In case you haven’t seen - I’ve also released another batch of gumroad PWYW content (which you can find in my shop). A huge February pack, plus another bunch of goodies coming (fingers crossed) tomorrow afternoon! Go check it out in my shop.
“If you want to change the world, change yourself. The world needs more traitors.”
A recipe for purifying the soul
Sometimes there just isn’t much to say. Winter continues on, long and cold and quiet. The world sleeps, creation waits, things lie dormant.
I am waiting, as patiently as I can manage, for the thaw.
“‘You strike me as impertinent, Miss Galinda,’ she said mildly.
’I have not yet struck you, Madame Morrible.’ Galinda delivered the daring line with her sweetest smile.”
I won't wait forever baby...
Happy Monday internet world. Writing an actual “blog” really brings me back to the myspace/livejournal days - the good old days of the internet when everyone was anonymous and social media was mostly focused on what song you had playing on your page.
This is one of my favourite spreads in this book so far. It started out as a messy gouache painting of a sky - which I became less and less happy with as I was working on it. It got to the point where I just decided, “NOPE” and covered half of it with collage and tape. When I choose a sketchbook, my main priority is a book with paper that is thick enough to withstand the huge amount of changing my mind that I generally get up to. I sometimes redo pages 3 or 4 times, gluing things and then ripping them off, or painting over things until I don’t hate it anymore. Really, all I’m trying to do is make a book of things that I think are pretty. I want to flip through it in the future and just enjoy staring at everything I’ve made. It’s the nicest thing about a sketchbook - it’s a “just for you” creative space. And looking back on this page now, almost a year since I made it, it strikes me as funny that even then I was thinking about the concept of “waiting”, and dreaming of pretty ways that the world might end - like giant comets crashing into Northern lakes.
“I won’t wait forever, baby
I won’t wait forever, baby
But I guess there’s nothing else to do.”
Doubt is a creature within the air...
I don’t tackle my sketchbooks in any sort of chronological order. Often, I’ll half-finish a page spread and then come back to it months later to fill in gaps or add new things. I’m constantly collecting bits of ephemera to paste in wherever they fit best, timelines and date stamps be damned.
But sometimes, I just sit down and draw something in one sitting - this was one of those times. I just thought “I feel like drawing a moth” and this is what happened. I did a vague pencil sketch before going in with pens - mostly just to get the layout right, since I am notoriously horrible at spatial awareness and often find myself drawing off the edges of pages or overtop of things I was sure I’d be able to avoid.
The quote on this spread is a reminder to myself. Another tendency I have, especially when it comes to making art, is to overthink. I get so caught up in the planning and the perfecting, that I don’t even draw anything. And the truth of art is… planning can only get you so far. Eventually, you have to just Make Something. And that Something might not turn out the way you envisioned, but at least you did it. At least you Made The Thing.
If you’re struggling with brain fog, stagnation, or fear of crossing busy streets, I hope this moth can serve as a reminder to you too.
“Doubt is a creature within the air. It grows when someone hesitates.”
To be good is to be forgotten...
This spread is the first in a completely random and scattered series of fact-collecting. Sometimes I come across a person I simply do not want to forget about, and so I’ll dedicate a little bit of time to learning about them and save it in my sketchbook. There’s a few more of these to come, but the first (and one of my favourites) is Theda Bara - silent film star and Hollywood’s first goth.
If you don’t know who Theda Bara is, you can click the image above to get a closer look and read a bit about her. She had an incredibly interesting life, and had a very strange existence within the Hollywood studio system that is worth learning about if you are pop culturally-inclined.
On the far right bottom corner, a sort of prayer dedicated to Ms. Bara and all she represented.
“To be good is to be forgotten. I’m going to be so bad I’ll always be remembered.”
The only real stumbling block is fear of failure...
Double spreads today! I decided to pair these two together because the “How To Dry Fresh Herbs” clipping that I took out of a magazine spans both spreads.
In the first image, the left side is a few pencil drawings of herbs that I use often, and some of their uses and associations. In the second image on the right side is a pencil drawing (with a small gouache accent colour) of the tiny kitchen from my old apartment on Delaware Avenue in Toronto. When I first moved into that apartment, I was not much of a cook. I wasn’t terrible at cooking - I just wasn’t really interested in it. I’m a notorious picky eater and I get into patterns with my eating - I’ll eat the same meal every day for weeks and not get bored. But while I lived at that second floor apartment, with it’s shitty, hastily renovated kitchen, I taught myself to have a different relationship with cooking. I started learning to cook a few “fancy” meals completely from scratch, and challenged myself to expand my tastes. Before I moved out, I drew this little scene so I wouldn’t forget this kitchen (plus I gave myself a few tips in the margins)
“The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you’ve got to have a what-the-hell attitude.”
For last year's words belong to last year's language...
The first page of Sacred Songs! As you might be able to tell, there are a whole bunch of pages ripped out of the front of this sketchbook. Sometimes, it just feels good to start fresh. A couple of years ago, I had done a few pages of sketches in this book that I just HATED. The book sat on my shelf, basically empty, for years, just because of a few pages of bad sketches. One day I realized - what’s stopping me from just ripping those out and throwing them away? It seems like such a simple solution, but my brain had just been stuck on how weird it would look to have a bunch of ripped out pages. The funniest part is - that experience actually inspired this first spread. Sometimes, a new start is exactly what we need. Don’t be afraid to throw things away when they aren’t working for you.
This page has a bit of collage, along with a gouache painting. The lace ribbon on the left edge wraps around from the front cover.
“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.”
Without art, we should have no notion of the sacred...
For this sketchbook, I’ll be posting each page spread, with some description and info below. I figured we’d start off with the book itself. I got this sketchbook from a dollar store. Making art doesn’t have to be expensive - you can buy dollar store art supplies and still create something beautiful. The paper in this book is slightly thicker than printer paper, which was really appealing to me - I love to use all kinds of different mediums in my sketchbooks so I don’t want to be ripping or soaking through pages. The side view shows the book at the time I’m starting this blog - I’m about half way through filling it. I’ll take another side view once the book is full.
The image on the front of the book is a small collage (done by me of course) - there was an image on the book originally that I just didn’t vibe with, so I covered it. I also added the lace ribbon detail on the edge.
““Without art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without science, we should always worship false gods.””