In the month of March 2018, I filled out a sketchbook for the Articulations Sketchbook Fill'er up Challenge. Articulations is an art store located in the Junction in Toronto and every year in April they showcase a display of various sketchbooks. These sketchbooks are all completed in the month before (March) from anyone who submitted theirs in.
You can go through almost the entire sketchbook here on my website!
I've participated for three years, including this year, and I seem to always have a different mindset and approach knowing that the sketchbooks will be open for public viewing. In the previous years that I've participated, it was a more rigorous process for me, as I tended to put a lot of pressure on myself. The thought of having to draw at least a page daily for the month, put me in a place where I believed that I would have to make each image "worth" looking at. In the end, this ended up making the process less enjoyable and the result more forced.
This year, I went for a more laid back approach, starting with a small 3.5"x5.5" sketchbook (easy to take everywhere and fill a page of), and instead of following a prompt daily or feeling pressure to create a finished piece everyday, I treated it the way I would use a sketchbook any other day.
A spread completed in my Children's Literature class at 8:30am.
Complete with doodles of my classmates, a portrait of J.M. Barrie from a slideshow, an obviously important thought about a tuna can that could have been, and some other characters to fill the page.
Two portraits from imagination.
I covered up the spread underneath with craft paper tape and defaulted to portraits, as I tend to do...
I approach my sketchbooks as places for ideas, notes on my daily life, random thoughts, visuals and just a place to do as I wish. I always keep one sketchbook that I treat with more care than ones made for ideation. These sketchbooks have every page filled with colour, characters, and words. This approach to sketchbooks actually helped my anxiety for attempting to keep them "perfect". By having more items to look at on a page, each actual drawing holds less weight for me and I can let them be as wonky (to a degree) as they truly are. I love writing in my sketchbooks, to not only build context for myself and others, but I like using them to fill space and act as emphasis on certain parts of a page. I don't really have a plan or reason on how I arrange my spreads but I like the look of filling a page.
My favourite pastime; cafe sketching.
People watching, doodling and just enjoying the vibes.
Drawing from references I really liked, more imagined characters and me trying to visualize & explain a dream that shook me.
I'm loving this approach to sketching, I feel more freedom in the pages. I tend to go through in chronological order, but revisit pages to colour or add to or even to cover up and try again with. I don't limit myself with themes or media and I keep ideation in other sketchbooks to minimize the worry of "messing up". I like having a "nice" sketchbook going at all times. These books are more like a collection of moments and events, rather than a place for practice or ideas - more like a sketch diary really.
I was also "participating" in something else, that overlapped within this sketchbook; Doggo Thursday!
This was a very low-key challenge set by me and some of my friends, when we were hanging out in a cafe before class.
I think the conversation that lead to this "challenge" was that, not many of us drew animals and that we should challenge ourselves with drawing things outside of our comfort zones. This resulted in us choosing dogs as our first themed challenge, and because that particular day was a Thursday, we decided to draw a new dog breed (in this case some of Jayymadethis' favourites), every Thursday.
And Doggo Thursday was born!
(Though you can see on my Instagram feed, that most of the days that I completed the pages were, unfortunately, not on a Thursday)
Collection of some Google'd Borzoi beauties.
Collection of the Legendary Corgi Butts.
I had a lot of fun finding (what I thought were) the most interesting dog poses of each bread, and trying to interpret them in my sketches.
I hope that, when going through each set of dogs, that there is an improvement. Even if there really isn't a visible difference, I could at least see myself finding each page to be easier than the last (though I didn't approach them in all the same ways). I think I could have done better in characterizing them but I think they turned out pretty cute either way.
The one thing I love the most about participating in the Articulations Sketchbook Challenge are the post-it-comments!
As the sketchbooks are open for the public, people are given post its to write notes for the artists, with comments on the work.
I think it's so amazing to read the little notes of encouragement and opinions of your work in person like this.
Each note gives me so much joy, and I love when people write what they liked and why. Something about having the physical notes also makes it special for me, and that's why I will always keep them in my sketchbook - they feel like a part of the overall experience.
Overall, I can definitely see myself participating again! I would also recommend anyone in the area to check it out next year, whether you participate yourself or just visit to flip through all of the various books. I had a lot of fun filling up this sketchbook in the month of March, and hope it's equally fun to look through!
Just a reminder that you can flip through almost the whole sketchbook here (it's a link!).
One day, in April, I spent an afternoon roaming around the Art Gallery of Ontario. It's a great gallery to revisit every once in a while, a place to take my time sketching pieces that catch my attention. During this particular visit, I focused on just sketching while also keeping in mind that I would later watercolour them in.