What Is A Sketchbook?

What's a #sketchbook for? Marshall has some thoughts!
He ALSO has a workshop on Heinrich Kley's sketchbooks running for the next few weekends. Find out more on his website!

This is from a new free lesson from Drawing Basics here on YouTube! A beginner's guide to sketchbooks and paper with lotsa juicy info about paper types, texture, weight, archivability and most importantly, how to avoid the common mental pitfall of sketchbooking.

For more information on Drawing Basics:

#art #drawing #shorts #howtodraw

[strgrlsgf]

As a person who tries to perfect every drawing in my sketchbook, I very much needed this

[yunagarnetsan]

"Have fun and don't care about grown-ups watching"
Me who got grounded for drawing a girl in shorts: Misery

[theunassumnglocalguy]

This reminds me of how frustrating a lot of YouTube artists handle their sketchbook tours. I expect like you said, a playground of loose ideas and concepts being played with and worked out. What most of them show is the highly curated book of finished art pieces. So either they are masters of their craft and only produce fully fleshed out ideas, or more likely, they don't actually want to show others their rough work. It drives me crazy either way.

[itsthegrmatt]

I'll never get tired of listening to Marshall's voice.

[gauchey]

I've been having trouble with a drawing because I want it to be perfect, but I really need to forget about perfection and just loosen up. Thank you for the reminder!

[lxentica]

Exactly! Someone gave me a beautiful sketch book and I had it with me for half year just because I was too afraid to draw and ruin the sketch book but I’ve promised myself this year I won’t be a perfectionist and will draw without worrying, because bad art make good art and artist so challeng yourself that you will draw on any sketch book no matter how pretty and precious it looks take risk or you won’t become a better artist! Good luck to whoever is reading this!❤❤

[Moonstar]

There are entire pages of my sketchbook with half-finished faces that just have “nope” written on the blank sides, so good to know I’m not doing anything wrong lol

[ramchezter]

The main reason why I want my sketchbook to look good, and why I’m so wary of what I draw is because I take it to school and everyone ALWAYS looks through it without my permission. And they call me dramatic when I tell em to not look in my sketchbook. That’s why I have a sketchbook I bring to school with good drawings, and the one I have at home is the one where I can freely draw. The other reason is because Im a HUGE perfectionist. When something looks bad I immediately rip it out

[marigoann]

Thank you, Stan and Marshall.

I still remember once being disheartened when someone complained about my sketchbook not having any completed pictures, before artists reminded me that that's NOT what it's actually for.

[johnfifty]

My sketchbooks are an actual mess I have pages that are just noses 👃 🙃 pages of just colour swatches pages of perspective its all about practicing different things youre not strongest in to improve

[dudebro]

It's such a joy to hear Marshall's voice man... Damn

[sheaaabutterrr]

Something that I do that really helps is working on two sketchbooks at a time: a “normal” one and an “ugly” one. As someone with a very artsy family, I always have people who want to flip through my sketchbook, but I don’t want them to see the bad stuff. With two, I can use my normal sketchbook for thoughtful drawings that I can show proudly and I can use the ugly one to doodle in and put all of my failed drawings in as well. It works super well for me!

[aIacrity.]

someone needs to show this to my art teachers, they would grade drawings out of our sketchbook. they told us at the start of the class, we would turn in our whole sketchbook so they could grade certain pages. it made this mental connection that my sketchbook could be shown to anyone at any time, and I was mortified of this as a perfectionist

[dnkime]

This is genuinely helping me out mentally

[Alex.]

i would draw what ever i want in my sketchbook but my mom goes though my sketchbook 😭😭

[BoredArtoast]

Some of my sketchbook pages are just covered in words and hasty doodles because I got a little too into it
Some are experimental character design angle stuff
Some are a combo of both
I love each and every page

[vroomvroom]

goodness i needed this. i have two sketchbooks that ive basically had for over a decade now and i still havent brought myself to using them. its at the point where every day i use loose leaf sheets of paper and they all get mixed up and lost abd everything💀

[ChewFingers]

Thanks, I really needed to hear this. Lately I haven't been doing much sketching and experimenting, only drawing stuff that takes forever to finish because I'm a hopeless perfectionist dumbass.
I'm gonna try and get into the habit of sketching again!

[tiredtracie]

Before as a newbie artist, I really did draw whatever I feel and want to for fun as I couldn't care more on what it's like inside. Though after years of it, I got another new sketchbook to fill up again but my big sister told me that "You should draw more serious art in your sketchbook you know, like finishing touches kind of drawings." And I took her comment on it.

And regretfully, after following that advice, I haven't been using my sketchbook for so long that I feared that I'll draw ugly completed artworks and such that I lost myself from having artblocks every time.

However... I'm slowly coming back to it as to see my sketchbook as a playground, like the creator said. But it isn't like what I used to before (aka doing it almost weekly), it takes me month/s now to get art motivation back. Oh I wished I could've ignore her statement and experimented more.

[TooSweaty]

Thank you for reminding me I just bought some new stuff and I often forget that I'm supposed to treat this as my own personal playground where I'm supposed to grow not show.