New Sketchbook Syndrome

This is a phenomenon you often hear about when it comes to drawing in sketchbooks. Sketchbooks are not only a tool these days. They often are a piece of art themselves. People want them to look good. And they especially don't want to start a new sketchbook with a bad page.

So there is advice out there about how to overcome this fear of ruining a new sketchbook with a bad first page. One tip is to start somewhere in the middle. If you then ruin your drawing it's at least not on the first page. For me this doesn't work, because I date my drawings and want them to be in chronological order. And then, sooner or later you have to tackle that first page and still don't know if it will turn out good or not. Another tip suggests to use the first page to paint your colour palette or the tools you are going to use or something like this. Well, if this is useful to you, why not.

I would simply say, chose a subject that is familiar to you, something you know you are good at.

But in the end, I see it like this: The first page is just one of many to follow. They won't all be great, they won't all be bad. You'll end up with a collection of good and not so good pages anyway. Don't single out the first one as the one that must be great.

PITT artist pens

Yesterday I went shopping for some christmas presents. So I decided to buy myself one, too. I got myself a basic set of Faber-Castell PITT artist pens brush. I had circled around them for a while, whereas I already had a grey brush one. And recently I got a silver and a gold one with a 1.5 nib to be able to add some sparkle to drawings.

I still love using coloured pencils, but I thought some kind of markers would be convenient for some instances. Though, I wasn't sure if I would like the brush nibs that those water-based brush pens have, as opposed to normal broad nibs. Still, those brush nibs give you the possibility to make different kinds of strokes. After playing around with my grey PITT pen I was sure I would learn how to handle them best.

Water-based markers were a must, because they don't bleed through paper easily. After all, I want to use them in my 125 gsm Sketch & Note sketchbooks. Of course I immediately tried them out and they work well. I like the colours. Now I need to put them into use in a drawing soon.


Introduction

I have been drawing for 20 months now. I started back then, because I wanted a creative hobby, that you can do on a daily basis without need...