An Amazing tool for artists

Sketch books and artist journals are a great tool for emerging and practicing creatives. From detailed blueprints of public scenes to wonky, out of scale cartoon doodles. Experimental colour tones, a mixture of mediums, manically scathed scribbles, shapes, notes, portraits and poetry all catalogued at your disposal, literally at your disposal. Holding onto old sketch books and journals, however, will allow you to come back to them later, you may learn something new, gain inspiration or even elaborate on an earlier concept. illustrating routinely improves yourself as a creative, these activities train your brain in multiple positive ways and artist journals make an excellent addition to your professional portfolio.

The exercise of sketching daily will improve your practice as an artist, you develop a personal, unique style without references, pressure or responsibility. This allows you as an individual to delve into subliminal and conscious influences, to experiment with them freely. Issues and frustrations that have perched themselves onto your thoughts can be processed and explored. Here on these pages, there is no social obligations and judgement, you are free to express opinions and desires. In this pure form, only you decide what works and what is shown to your peers, don’t like how this drawing is playing out? Flip the page another way and turn it into something else, scribble over it and start again. Don’t get attached to your sketches because mistakes are how we learn and if there was ever a safe place to talk to yourself, sketch books are your warm padded cell.

Constantly sketching, drawing and experimenting trains your creative and literal muscles. Techniques like a continuous line drawing or Contour will improve your hand-eye coordination, Gesture drawing breaks away from conscious thought to develop a fast-paced reaction favouring form over function. Casually doodling with a spare hand can distract you from stress and completely immersing yourself into a drawing shares the same benefits of meditation. As you traverse page after page, you begin to relax more and more, and as this happens you will notice slight improvements. These benefits may not be dramatic, but much like any other skill, you should practice in order to advance. Neglect a skill for too long and you won’t forget what to do, but it may not be as well trained as it could.

Sketch books and artist journals will eventually lead to an outstanding inclusion to your portfolio. However, before you slap a self-explorative journey on the desk of your next employer, I suggest you take the time to pick and choose your specific illustrations, colour pallets and creative conclusions. Take a photo or scan the images, then curate and organize them, make sure your technique and approach can be well explained. “This is an example of figurative form and crosshatch rendering”. Use notes to point out line, expression and anatomy. You don’t have to settle with raw sketches though, bring them into Photoshop or Illustrator and experiment further.

Not only are sketch books and artist journals important to evolve as a creative professional, they also help to meet new people. Try sketching in public, the curious will twist their necks and steer in your direction to get a peek at your creations. Some will talk to you, others will walk past. But according to a loose study of psychology and public art, you will be emanating positive creative vibes to everyone.

Start sketching, it doesn’t have to be pretty or perfect, you don’t even need an idea in mind, just planting the seed of creativity and caring for it, will blossom into an advantageous tool for creative practitioners such as yourself. It may even land you a job or find itself in a museum one day. Applying for an exhibition? Artist journals are an enticing insight into your artistic process.