Today I wanted to share with you some of my “unfinished” projects, so that you can know it’s not always shiny and perfect and neither am I 🙂
Recently, I have been thinking about, all the glorious joys that the internet holds we can sometimes get into a comparison trap where we feel like our art, our life “should” be like all the lovely finished works and photos of friends we see online. The reality that sometimes life/creativity isn’t all polished and finished and that’s ok.
One thing I have also discovered as a creative person, it’s very VERY important that you have time for creative play, you don’t have to take your ideas all the way everytime. It’s ok to play dress-ups with your materials and ideas and try them on for a while, and when you don’t feel like it anymore you can take them off 🙂
Play with your materials and see how they pan out, just being in that zone of play is an important part of fulfilling your creative side and you should be enjoying this time rather than being frustrated about it not working, sometimes I find I have to remind myself of that.
I try to everyday, just randomly sketch in my sketchbook, lately I have been using the Canson Art Book 180 and just playing with a variety of materials, pen, pencil, Mepxy Markers, Watercolour & Coloured Pencils, just for the joy of doing something creative but also for the experience of seeing how the materials behave for me.
This sketch book has a lovely hard cover and the bindings just feel lovely, this makes for good sketching when you are relaxing on the lounge and you need a solid surface to work on.
The paper whilst this is not a mixed media book, i found stands up ok with a light wash of watercolour with my waterbrush.
One of the joys just having a open book like this is that you can just pull out whatever you feel like doing at the time and being in a book you don’t have to worry about
not always having a completed work. It’s ok to come back later to look at unfinished work and not feel bad about it.
Unlike an art journal, (which i also love to do) i find just having a plain sketchbook can help with my ideas. My art journals for me are more about expressing feelings and a telling a little mini story where this for me is just about play. I would encourage everyone of all ages to have a sketchbook, I find it particularly a good thing to do with my son sometimes things come out in the drawings that can’t be expressed verbally.
So whilst this isn’t a completed project for you all to finish I hope you still enjoyed this post, I just wanted to share the book which I highly recommend and encourage you to just create.
Even if its just a couple of scribbles in a book like I have shown here, its all still being creative, each drawing will take you to another drawing and another. Its not about always finishing a glorious piece its just about doing.
