Keeping a Creative Sketchbook: Build Your Artistic Practice for a Joyfully Inspired Life
by Emma Block
Blurb:
Keeping a sketchbook is a wonderfully rewarding pursuit for artists and hobbyists alike. Your sketchbook is a safe place to explore, experiment, try new things, record your progress, and sometimes mess up, and working in a sketchbook, particularly on location, is an innately mindful practice. You become completely focused on the things you are sketching or painting and completely immersed in the atmosphere of the place.In Keeping a Creative Sketchbook , Emma Block shares her own sketchbook practice and offers inspiring artist interviews and numerous techniques and practices for beginning or transforming your own. Packed with ideas and prompts to get started, this book helps overcome overwhelm and open a world of joyful creativity. With your sketchbook by your side, you can slow down, be present, notice the little things, enjoy the process, let go of perfectionism, and embrace the blank page, discovering rich new depths to your creativity and finding your artist mindset for inner peace.
My Reaction:
"On-location" art creation isn't really something I do much of, at the moment, but I still found the book interesting and inspiring, with plenty of useful information for anyone considering keeping a sketchbook and uncertain of where to start. Much of this info is perfectly relevant beyond the sketchbook, too. If you don't like working in a bound sketchbook, you can just as easily do the same type of work on loose sheets or a pad or block of paper, then put them together in a binder, scrapbook, keepsake box, etc.
I particularly enjoyed the interviews sprinkled throughout the book, with other artists sharing how they use their own sketchbooks, tips, etc. and photos of their work. There are a variety of different styles to spark new ideas.
