Hey there!

 

As you may have noticed I have lots of sketchbooks (and that’s just the tip of the iceberg).

I wanted to share my story so maybe I can help out someone out there.

I used to think I needed the best materials but here in Brazil art supplies are quite expensive. If I bought a slightly more expensive sketchbook I was really afraid of ruining it.

When quarantine began I started to change. The time alone made me kind of obsessed about painting and drawing on every surface I could find and then I started making my own sketchbooks.

Cheap materials gave me the freedom to experiment and “waste” as many pages as I wanted. Right now I don’t really care about bad drawing, crumpled pages or paint blobs, is all part of my creative process.

This is my comfort zone and the kind of drawing I work with. My previously sketchbooks had all the same vibe and little to none experimentation.

 
But then when I started creating my own notebooks some of my daily practices changed. 

Here’s one junk sketchbook that was made with cardboard, cereal boxes, old mail, paper bags and other papers I had around the house.

Amazon sent a LOT of some sort of craft paper to protect my package so I decided to make more notebooks. I’m not used to oil pastels and I actually liked using this cheap paper to try this media out.

My old neighbor had a damaged book so why not?

Lately I work on several notebooks at once specially  because I have no patience to wait for paint to dry but the sketchbooks I’ve been enjoying the most are the ones I made with colored paper. I inserted a lot of paper into each one so I don’t  even think twice before flipping the page and leaving something I don’t like behind. That actually made me discover new ways to enjoy art and here are a few examples.

Collage, watercolor,  ink, paints, words, Korean learning, everything is allowed and I’m a much happier artist right now.

When people say that art doesn’t need to be precious they were not kidding.

I hope this is helpful for someone.

 

 

Thanks for the class!