Finding time to draw is a challenge. To increase your drawing time, you need to be prepared.
One of the best ways to be prepared is to be ready for drawing opportunities in every crack in your day.
Keeping a sketchbook ready allows you to plan for any inspiring occasion. Be able to reach for your sketchbook when unexpected drawing time pops up. These extra drawing minutes can be significant. Your sketchbook can also be a space for quick notes, grocery lists, phone numbers, and overheard conversations.
Match Your Sketchbook Size to Every Situation
To be ready for any potential drawing moment, it helps to keep a sketchbook within reach in several places. I store:
- one in my car,
- two in my church bag (one for me and an extra one ready for any bored child),
- one in my purse and
- a few at home.
I swap these around based on my mood or where I am going.
When I am planning to draw in public, I prefer to have a smaller sketchbook to be less obvious. Some people love to see what you are drawing, but others are offended.
I generally don’t mind attention, but it is horrible when someone takes interest and then wants to look in your sketchbook and interrupt a drawing in progress. To remedy this, take a second sketchbook for them to look through while you continue to draw.
Or maybe it is just as bad when someone notices that you are drawing them and they are shy and get up and leave. So it is better to be more undercover.
If I am drawing at home, a larger or heavier sketchbook is appropriate and easy to store and keep the spine safe from injury. This means that having four or more sketchbooks progressing at one time is effective. If you are out, the larger, heavier sketchbook can be awkward and also make a spectacle of yourself. Choosing the right sketchbook may also involve considering what medium you are in the mood for. So it depends.
Other Methods That Increase Your Drawing Time
- Keeping different sketchbooks in convenient places.
- Allowing myself to start new sketchbooks whenever the mood hits me.
- Skipping around and working in the sketchbook on whatever page inspires me.
- Draw while doing other things like watching tv or attending meetings.
All these add up to more drawing time.
This is how I take advantage of the wait in the bank line, the doctor’s office waiting room, and certainly the airport. People in airports are especially still and distracted with their phones for extended periods.
It has been my ambition to take myself on artist’s dates. This is a way to treat myself to time away and different venues and scenery or people watching for deliberate drawing time.
The Perfect Sketchbook Doesn’t Exist
The best sketchbook is the one that’s with you when inspiration shows up. You can become a hunter of moments. Your tool changes based on the place you are in when the opportunity comes. You can’t always predict when you’ll have to time to kill, so it pays to stay ready (so you don’t have to get ready).
Too Many Sketchbooks?
It is true that I am a collector of sketchbooks – you might even say hoarder. And I don’t force myself to finish one before I start the next one. I don’t force myself to work in chronological order. I give myself the freedom to
- make ugly pages,
- to skip around,
- to make drawings
- or collage
- or patterns
- or lettering
- or splotches of leftover paint;
- or notes to myself
- or quotes
- or overheard conversations;
- or whatever feels right.
The Benefits and the Drawbacks
Working in multiple sketchbooks causes each sketchbook to take longer to fill, but why am I rushing?
Once the sketchbook gets about half full, there is a momentum that happens. When I start to realize that it is almost ready for a flip through, that motivates me to get it completely filled. The downside is that it takes longer, but the upside is often several sketchbooks come to fullness at the same time.
In Conclusion
You don’t need a large block of uninterrupted time to draw. You need to be ready when a small opportunity appears.
Keep a sketchbook where you are likely to need one. Use different sizes for different situations. Give yourself permission to start new sketchbooks, skip around, make imperfect pages, and draw whatever interests you in the moment.
A few minutes here and there may not seem significant, but the minutes accumulate.
Become someone who is ready to draw when the opportunity appears. You may find that the best sketchbook isn’t the perfect sketchbook at all.
It’s the one you have with you.
Where creativity grows – on paper, in the garden and at the table.
Do you have a sketchbook? How often do you draw in it?