Behind the Scenes: Sketchbook Peep

I don't often show my messy sketchbook – maybe because I'm not sure that anyone cares and I'll be honest it's full of the in-betweens of the process of art-making where I don't like much of what I've drawn. But I thought I'd give you a peek between the smudgy pages, since I've been spending a lot of time in my sketchbook slowly developing larger projects. And the unlikable bits are all a part of the process!

My sketchbooks are generally full of pencil scribbles and smudges. Sometimes it's me finding a character or pictorially list-making the items that will go in a space or the way a kid's hand holds something. Or figuring out the shape of a nose, which can result in rogue noses sprinkled all over a page and between other sketches.

I sketch small, with only a pencil, and try to draw quickly so that I can stay in simplicity without getting too caught up in the details. I love the details, but I can get too lost in them at the early stages. My sketchbooks have never been full color drawings that fill each page (though I admire all the artists who have sketchbook practices like that!).

Many of the sketches probably don't look like much to someone else, because they can be pretty rough. But within all of these pencil marks, some of them end up making some sort of sense to me. And *sometimes* are the seeds of something more.

Below you can see how a couple of sketches ended up becoming a more detailed, full color illustration. This drawing started to take shape through some writing I had done around a memory, even before I sketching. And then there were a whole bunch of steps between the sketch and the final, but it's fun to see where it all started and what it became.

This illustration is available as an art print in my shop here! It's titled Samosa Circle and I also have some writing about the memory from which it came from there!

I hope you enjoyed this look into my process! Cheers to the slow (sometimes difficult!) art process, friends. Grateful for every moment that I am able to use my hands to create.