Art Journal Sketchbook time means no excuses

I’m happy to have had yet another successful auction at Soul Sisters United Art Collective last week! I have been busy packaging my original work to send to new homes and using small spaces of time to put my art journal sketchbook to good use.

I’ve been enjoying getting back to having some fun art play in my art journal sketchbooks. I am working on filling a page everyday. Truth be told I am not succeeding on the ‘every day’ aspect but I am creating more often. When I find I am not in the head-space to make ‘sell-worthy’ art I delve into my Stillman & Birn sketchbook instead. It feels good to just play and see what happens without wondering if something will be good enough to sell when complete.

I often break out my art journal sketchbook during out evening family reading. We all love to read together and for the duration of the Wings of Fire series which my boys absolutely love and have read more than once, my husband is the official reader. There are many characters involved in this series and he is best at creating fun voices (and remembering them all!) for each character. The boys love it and it gives me time to listen to the story and create at the same time. Idle hands, not good.

This is a great time to practice drawing faces. I feel I haven’t quite found my style to a T. I’m still working on eyes and mouths and noses. The face, really. I love drawing the long nose line, the long necks and limbs with tiny fingers and toes, but the facial expressions and details are still a work in progress for me. Right now I am really enjoying just playing around with somewhat realistic faces and seeing where it takes me.

The theme for auction next month is Monochromatic. I have a few ideas for watercolour and acrylic pieces. One of them may be something simple like this. I have to remind myself that simple is good. I scroll through Pinterest and find so many wonderfully simple yet beautiful works of art. It is so very inspiring! I have them all squeezed together in one group on my Pinterest account and think I need to do a bit of breaking it down into more cohesive subject matter. But alas, to scroll through so many varied pieces and see how others create brings me joy.

Between creating art to sell and packaging pieces to be sent off to new homes (it’s hard to let them go but it’s good too, you know?) I am enjoying the sketching process. There are no excuses for not creating. A sketchbook is the perfect tool to use for those wee bits of storytelling time when I just want to listen but feel the need to ‘art’.

Do you  have an art journal sketchbook? I have too many to be truthful! But the only way to fill them up is to use them, right? I will be sharing more sketchbook work here to keep me in line. Ha!

Happy creating!

Moongirl xx