Making Room for Sketchbooks & Getting into the Sketchbook Habit

This module is about how we can encourage learners to see sketchbooks as a place to experiment freely. We all have preconceptions about how what our sketchbook pages should look like – some people get a lot of enjoyment from a certain aesthetic, but often a believe that sketchbooks should look perfect – or contain best work, actually stops the user from experimenting, discovering, collecting – which after all is perhaps what a sketchbook is for.

Sketchbooks are about a creative journey, and not about finding an answer. If sketchbooks were about finding an answer, they would end when outcome was decided – but sketchbooks don’t end: a good sketchbook will throw up more questions, more suggestions for future journeys.

The exercises below suggest ways in which you can encourage learners to see their sketchbooks as places where they can generate richness! Speed is a useful tool in this: it helps us counter the negative processes which inevitably take place in our brains whereby we try to talk ourselves out of things (it won’t work, I won’t like it, it’s not worth it, it’s too much trouble). Try the exercises alone, or in combination with each other.