I love my sketchbook. It’s basically my journal where I can explore my thoughts and feelings with my own form of hieroglyphics. I have a collection of sketchbooks that I’ve filled out in succession, documenting my life and my art journey. Only this year, however, have I put more effort into translating my psyche into meaningful doodles. It started as a lockdown activity which transformed boring hours into a semblance of productivity, but I found the practice to be most beneficial for my mental stability. Drawing became a kind of artistic meditation and self reflection as I developed what I call stream of consciousness doodling. The key is to just draw anything and everything that pops in your head, even if it doesn’t look great, and then you can start to identify thought patterns that you might not have been able to visualize. For example, I can look back on pages and see which people were occupying my thoughts because their faces show up all over. I wanted to share and explain a few of my favorite pages and doodles because I think it will be fun and they’ll probably look cool all together. (Apologies in advance, there is some nudity because I am inspired by the human form.)
This is the cover of my sketchbook. I personalized it because I wanted to enjoy looking at it. I found these stickers in my old sticker collection, and the doodle is from one of my favorite illustrators.
This is the first instance in my sketchbook of mindful doodling. I just filled up the whole page with little thoughts and then went over it with watercolor until I thought it looked cool. I also should mention that half of the things I draw are just myself, but its interesting to see how my hair changes over time.
This is the only page I used colored pencils on. I wanted to experiment with them because I have a TON of really nice colored pencils, but I don’t really like the way they look compared to watercolor. The mermaid is obviously me wishing I had a tail instead of a uterus. The girl staring vacantly is also meant to represent the feeling of sitting around while time passes.
This page was meant to be a comprehensive self portrait. Me surrounded by all the things I think about and have interest in. The sword is loosely based on one from my favorite anime, Soul Eater, and the rest of the doodles are just fun. I really really love the way the tentacled alien babe turned out.
This is one of my more recent pages, and I’m obsessed with the way the orange watercolor turned out for the main face’s hair. If you peek around you’ll see me with pink hair, a model from Celine’s runway show, Cleo napping, my paintbrush jar, and the words “I just make my stupid little doodles and hate them :)”.
I did this one at work while it was slow, and I like the focal point of my tired looking face at the top. Bottom left corner features Kevin Parker, and my personal favorite of this page is the awkward looking Kermit I tried to draw from memory.
This page I did mostly at my friend Lauryn’s place, as evidenced by the drawing of her laying down in the middle. Also featured is a rendition of my friend Madison in the lower left corner. She’s on quite a few of my pages.
This is my most recent page, and it’s unfinished. I wanted to show it because it helps illustrate the way I start in one corner and work my way filling the space. I pay attention to certain things while I’m drawing like the spacing, the size, the amount of detail, and the blackwork. I like a page to have all of these in different degrees to create a visually interesting collaboration. I also experiment with different styles varying from more realistic to more cartoonish, that way the page is more interesting as a whole. I haven’t added color to my most recent pages, but I may in the future if I feel led, it just depends on whether I think they’ll look cooler that way.
I hope you enjoyed looking at a few of my sketches and doodles. Maybe you’ll be inspired to incorporate some of my art style into your own sketchbook, or maybe start a sketchbook in the first place! If you made it this far, thanks for reading, I hope you stay tuned for future posts more oriented on fashion.